Robichaud said the role of the Citizens Council is not to provide direct services to clients but rather to facilitate communication and coordinate efforts among a variety of networks of professionals that do offer services to children, youths, and families.

"One of these networks," he said, "is the Juvenile Justice Advisory Council (JJAC), created in 2001 to promote communication and collaboration among juvenile justice professional providers, lay citizens, and volunteers."

JJAC members have been working together for more than five years to address the challenges and barriers that are part of a decentralized system, said Robichaud. Under the leadership of retired school superintendent Andre Paquette, JJAC produced the first Report Card on the Belknap County Juvenile Justice system in June 2006. Benchmarks and indicators around the principles of Restorative Justice, including victim restitution, community service, and offender competencies, were included in this report.

"But we still need to streamline and automate the collection of data so that we can accurately track progress from year to year," said Robichaud.

Read it all.

State officials said the roughly 40 percent cut in the juvenile restorative justice program is not related to the proposed increase in spending on foster children.

But since money is limited, and the number of worthy programs is not, the two changes are not completely unrelated, either.

"It is in the same funding pool," said Cindy Walcott, deputy commissioner of family services.

"There is a limited amount of money to go around. There were tough choices that need to be made," Walcott said. "These are young people who do not have support of their families. A choice was made to prioritize continued care to those young people the state has had custody of. The state is their parent, essentially."

The juvenile restorative justice program was once supported largely with federal money, but over the last few years, those grants gradually have dried up. Last year, the state paid for the nearly $1 million program on its own.

That $965,000 in annual funding may be cut by 40 percent under this year's proposed budget.

Read it all. And see an editorial calling on state officials to avoid either-or choices.

Badea Abu Al-Naja writes in Arab News:

“I remember a case in which Prince Abdul Majeed got involved in saving a man from execution. It was the case of an Egyptian man who worked at a village near Taif. The Egyptian was in jail and facing execution after killing an Egyptian friend following a fight over some money. The Egyptian buried his friend’s body and tried to destroy evidence of the murder,” he said. The Egyptian was arrested and having confessed to the crime spent 12 years on death row. “He felt guilty at every moment that passed while he was in prison. When the execution date neared, he sent a letter asking for clemency from Prince Abdul Majeed,” said Al-Zahrani.

“The prince ordered us to help the man and review his case. After reading up on the case I traveled to Egypt and met with the victim’s family. I learned that the family of the murderer had tried many times to get a pardon for their son but the victim’s family had refused,” said Al-Zahrani, who added that the family was living in dire poverty.

“When they learned that I was a representative of Prince Abdul Majeed and that he had invited them to visit Makkah and Madinah for Umrah and Haj at his expense they became very happy,” he said. The visit was helpful and it resulted in the family forgiving the murderer, who was released and returned to Egypt to start afresh.

Read it all.

A genuine apology can be boiled down to this: take responsibility for the harm done by (1) naming the harm, (2) acknowledging that it was wrong, (3) expressing sincere regret, and (4) committing to avoid such harmful behavior in the future. This often prepares the way for forgiveness.

An apology might include an explanation or account of what happened, but it must go further: "an apology begins where an account ends," says Nicholas Tauvis in his book Mea Culpia: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation. That is, to truly apologize is to acknowledge that, regardless of the circumstances, one has no excuse or justification for what he or she has done.

Read it all.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust is a tough-on-crime lobby in New Zealand that uses sensational stories about victimization to promote increased use of prisons. It has now set its sights on New Zealand's juvenile justice system, viewed as a leading example internationally in restorative justice.

Restorative Justice and Family Group Conferences are a failed social experiment and it is time to introduce "accountable" justice according to the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

Spokesman Garth McVicar said the Trust's head office in Napier had been inundated with calls from members of the public "absolutely frustrated at the escalation of violent crimes and pathetic consequences handed out to young offenders."

Not so fast, say Prison Fellowship New Zealand and the Salvation Army in a response prepared by Kim Workman.

Will Morton writes in Baltimore Magazine about what to do "when the people next door are driving you insane”:

Many people who come for mediation have called the police more than 30 times. Preventing that number of calls, Harmon said, translates into savings for both police and taxpayers.

“We offer people a way out, rather than going to police” with disputes over yards, porches, parking, trash, music, noise, and animals, Harmon says. “A lot of the issues have to do with Baltimore as a city of rowhouses, and that people are living 10 feet away from each other.”

Harmon has three simple tips to try to repair (and prevent) damage: Speak directly. Many disputes involve messages through family members or other neighbors. Said Harmon, “If people talk things out face to face, they can make it better.”

Spend time listening as well as talking. Talk about how the situation affects you, rather than how horrible the other person is.

And avoid saying “always” or “never,” or other phrases that escalate disputes.

Read it all.

From his Prison Reform Trust Lecture, 1 Feb 2007:

So yes, the doublet of rights and responsibilities is unavoidable. But it is not a matter of balancing what’s due to me with what’s due to society or other people in general. My responsibility to speak for you is inseparable from someone’s responsibility to speak for me: no-one is left isolated, and no-one’s welfare is finally to be separated from that of all others. Responsibility is good news as well as bad, if you must think in that sort of framework. And what a healthy legal culture promotes is – if you allow this general moral background, what you could call a ‘liberal-plus’ approach – individuals growing into better mutual awareness, so that their speaking for each other and taking on the task of another’s welfare may be just, well-informed and solidly motivated….

To create another kind of culture in the Criminal Justice System, one that is committed to building responsibility, the first thing we must do is to get rid of the tacit assumption that managing the needs of victims and the needs of offenders is a zero-sum game. As I have outlined it, the history of recent policy debates shows how easy it is to become trapped in such a model. Isolate offenders’ needs from those of victims, and there is a predictable reaction in the direction of treating victims as the primary beneficiaries of a process in which they are to be given something like a veto in some circumstances and are imagined as customers who must be satisfied. Isolate victims’ needs from those of offenders and you have another reaction which will leave victims without information or interaction in regard to offenders, and which will risk making the rehabilitation of offenders a narrowly focused therapeutic exercise….

In recent years, the restorative model has become more and more deployed in the Youth Justice System; and, in spite of some false starts and awkwardnesses, it is beginning to prove its worth. Now is the time for ‘mainstreaming’ it. The commitment of the Home Office to developing community prisons is in many ways welcome. But it has to go side by side with alternatives to custody – and therefore with some long hard thinking about the multiplication of custodial tariffs when new legal offences are created. This is a long shot, I realise – but I wonder if the time has not come for a comprehensive commission on penal policy and non-custodial options. We cannot for much longer manage with an expanding prison population whose levels of reoffending are so high.

Read it all.

Laura Smith reports on rj research in SocietyGuardian.co.uk:

Sandra had to fight to meet the man who killed her husband. After the blur of words in the courtroom, after the announcement that a sentence had been reached, even after he had been put behind bars, she was left with a nagging feeling that it wasn't quite over, that she hadn't quite said what she needed to say. There were questions to ask - and the only person who could answer them was the killer. She asked one local agency to help arrange a meeting with him, but they couldn't, or wouldn't. "I think they thought I was a little bit bonkers," she says. "They were wary because it wasn't a stolen bag of sweets or a broken window of a car, which can be dealt with by a cosy chat. It was a life. But it's not for them to say what's right for me. I knew I needed to do it." More

The opening paragraph of Wendy Jasson da Costa’s article in the Daily News and posted on iol.co.za reads:

"The National Prosecuting Authority says it is not going "soft on crime" despite its attempts to introduce restorative justice and community prosecution to South Africa." More

Brenda Payton, writing in InsideBayArea.com:

In one of the more unusual recommendations, the youth violence task force suggested the establishment of healing centers throughout the city offering grief counseling and restorative justice programs. Restorative justice is based on the idea of repairing the harm caused by crime rather than simple punishment.

Grief counseling and restorative justice might seem like touchy-feely approaches in light of the increase in homicides, shootings and armed robberies in our city. However, they address some root causes driving the violence.

Most young men caught up in criminal activity have lost several friends and family members and never have received grief counseling. They live with the anger and hopelessness that breed violence. In fact,many shootings and homicides are in retaliation for previous attacks, creating a never-ending cycle.

The grief not only affects the victims and perpetrators, but also washes over their families and neighborhoods. Violence is so prevalent in some areas of the city, the residents are living with perpetual, not post-, traumatic stress disorder. Grief counseling is desperately needed.

Read it all.