Restorative justice initiatives

Restorative justice has a goal to make offenders more accountable by placing the focus on restoring the community and the victim rather than focusing on punishment or confinement of an offender.

Many aspects of restorative justice have been incorporated in the way we handle all criminal cases. Victims have an opportunity to weigh in on plea agreements and be heard at sentencing, offenders are ordered to pay restitution to the victim as part of their sentence. Restitution is to make the victim whole financially as if the crime had not occurred. Each of these now common programs started as restorative justice initiatives.

One of the goals we have in juvenile court is to make juveniles more accountable for their conduct and to connect the delinquent conduct to the consequences of that conduct. The delay between the conduct and the consequences that often occurs in juvenile court serves to disconnect the two events in the way the child perceives them. The penalty which can occur a year or more after the event often seems like an unfair thing to the juvenile who has forgotten about the incident that brought them to court.

By having an earlier resolution, the juvenile can more easily connect the events. To that end, my office along with the Rice County Dispute Resolution Project, law enforcement, the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, the courts and our partners in the Northfield and Faribault school districts have been exploring whether or not we should develop a formal process for victim/offender mediation for juvenile courts.

The parameters of the program have not been fully resolved, but the idea is to use it for certain low-level offenses as either an alternative to adjudication or as part of juvenile disposition. Disposition is the juvenile court term for a sentence.

The advantages of such a program would be that we could resolve cases more quickly, give the victim a chance to be heard and to discuss appropriate measures to make the victim feel whole after the offense. The offender gets a chance to hear from the victim early on about the harm caused and realize that other people were negatively affected by his or her actions.

If the parties can reach a resolution they are happy with, then the case can be resolved quickly and with greater satisfaction than if the process takes several months in court.

Rather than appearing in court, the victim and offender would meet with a trained mediator who could open the discussion and propose resolutions. The victim and offender must agree to the process or it will not occur, the victim and offender must also agree on the proposed resolution or there will not be one.

Studies and experience elsewhere have found this to be an effective and efficient process to reduce court time and improve satisfaction with the result compared to ordinary prosecution. Other studies have shown that such programs can reduce recidivism and have other positive effect on the outcome. The final details of the program will need to be resolved prior to implementation, but all players will have an opportunity to have input on any program before it is enacted.