the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants in do not reflect those of b m c or the town of belmont b m c welcomes your comments call us at  this notion of restored of justice has raised has been has been raised in belmont a couple of times in the last few weeks belmont's the money against racism i had a recent panel that addressed the issue and the cherry principal mike mcallister included a reference to restored of justice in the letter to the community into the parents  after a disturbing recent incident of graffiti at our middle school i thought folks in belmont would have an interest in learning more about restorative justice and what it means what it is and what it means to the community of belmont we have with us today therefore catherine bond feel yo who is with belmont against racism thanks for stopping over catherine thank you for stopping over let's start with the i don't know if it's the easy question when people say restorative justice is is there a commonly accepted notion of what that means thank you roger yes that is one of the big questions that people are asking these days what is restored of justice what does it mean and what does it look like and programs across the communities can do things differently but many people many practitioners look to a common definition and i like to look to one by howard zinn there who's kind of informally dubbed the grandfather restored of justice in its modern movement in the u and his definition is that restorative justice is a process to involve to the extent possible those who have a stake in an offense and to collectively identify and address the harms the needs and obligations in order to heal and put things as right as possible so it's really it's a paradigm shift and we can go into the paradigm shift as we go further there but it's part of the criminal justice system our program communities restorative justice was created to specifically help create an option to work with the criminal justice system it seems like it is becoming or it has become more belmont yeah so our state senator had a very firm hand in passing the criminal justice bill which included a section for restorative justice also a belmont citizen is the district attorney marian ryan for middlesex county and she has been using restorative justice in the practice with the d a s office and so forth just middlesex and suffolk county are using restorative justice so we have a belmont connection to restore to justice already and can you summarize the the elements of restored of justice that appeared in the criminal justice reform bill that will was so instrumental with yes so the bill the criminal justice reform bill was expansive and it covered many points of the criminal justice process the portion in regards to restore it of justice did three things the st is that it created restored of justice in the criminal code as an option for cases that are past the point of arraignment and in the court room and it gave restorative justice as an option as a disposition for those cases the nd thing that it did is that it created a confidentiality provision for the conversations that take place in a restored of justice circle or conversation or dialogue and that is so important because this process is based on truth telling and people are will not tell the truth if they're afraid that at some point it might be used against them and so this bill establish some protections for those conversations the rd thing that the build it is that it created an advisory committee built up of restorative justice practitioners as well as systems stakeholders to look at restored of justice across the commonwealth and track them support them and try to figure out how to help them spread does c four r j have i mean to get to the point someday where that will just flow off the tongue that does communities for restorative justice have a process in implementing implementing that bill so we actually have a few partners who are on the new restorative justice advisory committee the chiefs of police association has a member of the system stakeholder and chief frederick ryan from the arlington police department has been asked to serve on that committee and i'm also serving as one of the restored of justice practitioners on the committee to try and look at how we can help graham's spread and give access to more people across the commonwealth and also there's a component of that that will track data because i think a lot of people know you know to what extent this is been successful we're seeing already some data that shows that that victims in cases feel much better about the outcomes using restored of justice versus the court system but we need to have that quantified you know have that information quantified so it really hasn't the process hasn't been used in belmont yet on an institutionalized basis but as you know as one of you said marion ryan our district attorney is a proponent of restored of justice and the chief of police in arlington is a proponent of restorative justice that's correct and if you'd like an example that the chief gave i could go ahead sure do that or so for example there was a swastika put on a wall somewhere and the offender was described what this meant to her to see a swastika because she had lost family members in the whole accost so there is a situation where the offender actually learns from the experience but the victim also gets to say how it felt to her to have this offense happen and so that was successfully done through restored of justice the young person doesn't have a court record but the victim also feels like justice has been served in bringing that back to the concept of restorative justice that you noted at the beginning there is an inclusiveness to the restored of justice process there and that that example seems to be a good example of where the the victim and the what the the opposite of the offender the victim in the offender get together and rather than simply watching each other in a court proceeding ideally yes and so i'm not so i mention the restorative justice paradigm shift and yeah so just start with our traditional perspective and as an attorney you know and people who watch court t v can can find some understanding of our traditional perspective and it starts out with these three questions what law was broken who did it and how should we punish them and their status the traditional paradigm the traditional gun so when we partner with police and we partner with prosecutors and we partner with him we try to explain to people who have experienced a harm what the conversation will be like if they proceed in court it's be boiled down to those three perspectives and one thing in not to interrupt but i am getting an interrupt i guess so the harm that creates that was created is an even part of that  traditional paradigm right ok go ahead i'm sorry absolutely and that seemed to just want you you yes seems to jump out you've already got the shifts right you already are aware of the paradigm shift and it's ok natural here and there may not interrupt let me let you that well the other three the way to look at the exact same harm in the exact same situation with the exact same people but do it a little bit differently is to ask who's been affected so who's the victim in the situation what are their needs and who is obliged to meet those needs so we're really bringing it back to accountability and responsibility but we're starting with the person who is impacted the person who was harmed st can i try to spit back but i think i just heard please that term in the traditional paradigm the interests of the victim are never a part of the process it's simply what is the violation been and how is that going to be punished whereas with restored of justice you look at who has been adversely affected where who has experienced a harm and how can the process help  redress that harm did i get it yes yes or not you know and i don't want to speak in absolute terms or certainly points in the process where the victim can weigh in and the prosecutors are are there representing the needs and the desires of the victim but it brings people together in a restored of conversation in a different way that's not possible in the courtroom because in the courtroom you have attorneys speaking to the judge about what happened to other people and and we're sort of justice we're creating a venue for the victim and the in thunder to engage each other is there a point in the restorative justice process where the offender makes a man's and what do i mean by that where an element to the process is making an apology or providing restitution is that too broad of a question now that's exactly right that the process so we have a circle process and we prepare the parties and we do a whole bunch of work during the intake phase but then we bring people together in a circle conversation and that dialogue is facilitated by trained facilitators from our program and circle keepers and that's part of why we're excited to partner with belmont is that we love to have local volunteers working on local cases so belmont residents working on cases that come from us from the belmont police department is the ideal way to operate because those residents will know the best ways to make repair if the community's been impacted as well as in you used to term there and i want to come back and emphasize that term because my impression is in the term is circles my impression is that that isn't an off the cuff term that that's really a term of art in the restored of justice process can one or the other views displaying what a circle is so aaron can explain but i wanted to say that one of the things about this circle if you've ever participated in one is you have a circle in because you're putting the rest of what's happening outside away and you're now just simply focused and some of this is based on indigenous practices from a long time ago so well it's new to a many of us if you talk to somebody from the may or a community it's not at all new to them and so there's you know obviously different types of circle but it is one in which you are focused internally not and letting the rest of society and your cell phones and whatnot  put aside and as my understanding is there's often a keeper who is the main person who sets the tone for the circle and often there's a piece that somebody holds a can be a rock a feather or whatever the person who helped holds that is the person who gets to speak and everyone else has to listen and then you said and then you pass it on to that person and everyone has to listen and know that person gets to speak so everyone has an opportunity to be a speaker and the rest of the community has to listen a lot of this has to do with learning to listen which is a big proponent i think aaron can talk a little bit more about who else is in the c for r j we always have the victim in the offender we like to transition our terminology take knowledge them as the responsible party in the impacted party or parties and then we also want those people to have support people maybe family members maybe friends other people who can give them support through the process and then afterwards and then also we have facilitators from our programs who who are the volunteers from the local community who work with the responsible party throughout our program and then we always have a police officer in our circle because we are a community police partnership that's how we were founded eighteen years ago and that's the core that's one of the central tenants of our model is that we have a  member of law enforcement in the circle who can present the legal reality of what happened talk about this specific situation and what it might look like if it did proceed through court but also there to make to provide safety for the group that we're bringing together and it's a wonderful opportunity i found for law enforcement to be trust with the community because so often after the criminal and senate you have many emotions on both sides and you can imagine that the responsible party and their family might have question various emotions on the spector spectrum of anger to confusion and there's no other opportunity to have a dialogue between those parties ok i have questions for each of you and i'm going to start with you aaron and then i'm going to come back to you this is fascinating step what happens if the victim says i don't want any part of this i'm angry i'm hurt and there's no way i'm going to sit down with the offender with the person who is accused of doing this to me yes so i mean that must be common right well i wouldn't necessarily say it's common but it can how can and you know so we start with a referral from our partners either the police departments or the district attorney's diversion program or members in the court and so the st thing is somebody identifies a case might be good for restorative justice and then we dig into the weeds and people often ask what the criteria are for types of cases that will take they wonder if we have a certain list of criminal offenses that will accept or how we make those decisions and our criterion are only three the st is that we have to have an offender who's willing to accept responsibility for what they've done ok and wants to try and make it right they don't have to have any idea what that might look like but they have to have some desire to make a repair so if they reject the legitimacy of the process at the front end there is no reason to engage in the process that is concerned we need a victim who is willing to allow the process to go forward and that can look different depending on the situation depending on the people's desires so we might have a victim who says yes i want to sit there across from the person i have questions to ask them i'm angry i want to say certain things to them and that's great say that's what the circles for we might also have a victim who says you know i want them to be held accountable but i don't want to ruin their life by prosecuting this person in kirton giving him a criminal record but i want them to learn from what they did i want them to not do this to anyone else again and so that person might not choose not to be in the circle but will allow us to move forward in we might get a statement from them or letter or they could even have a representative sit in the circle but we'll proceed with that that case and then the rd requirement that we have for moving forward with the case is that we have to be able to  reasonably ensure that we can provide us a safe process and that means that if drugs or other substances drugs or alcohol or any substances are identified in the police report the individual has to be assessed independently before we'll even begin the process to determine if there are other needs that take priority and we also need to make sure that it's safe to bring the victim in a church or together and you can imagine with our police partnership having the meetings and police departments and having a police officer there can provide a lot of assurance to people who have just experienced a crime sure ok one question i wanted to ask you you talked about a community says seems like this is a community based process but the question is it seems like there are a lot of different kinds of communities within a community you have a school community you have a community that is revolves around your place of worship you have the broader bow my community so do you different communities do different types of communities have different types of circles are you following me i am absolutely following yes and in restored of justice circles don't have one model it's not a one size fits all the a very what restorative justice looks like for c four r j might look different in topeka kansas and the program that they have so that's the st thing partnership and one of the things that resort of justice does as you say as we have talked about is putting a focus on changing addressing the harm that stunt and you don't have to have it be just a criminal justice thing that can happen and it does happen in schools even in on the panel discussion they were using it in prison with incarcerated young men to discuss conflicts that they had well so in in fact you can see it in any sort of way because it with schools you don't want a young person to be marked by an incident for the rest of their school career you want them obviously all of us want our children to learn from their mistakes we all made them and i was thinking and i don't know if this is applicable tense i'm new to this but in the school setting it seems like this concept is would be a good way to address bowling is is that an off the wall suggestion it's not off the wall and something that's important to keep community and so having community building circles and really starting to get familiar with the circle the talking piece the process of listening yes and and it is most helpful if a community started that if a school started the community building circles before an incident comes up that they want to resolve with restored practices because when they do that then people are familiar with that and the trust is already built and the process is familiar so you can really get to the heart of the harm that occurred much more quickly if i can change directions for just a minute in thinking of restored of justice it seems if st blasts you get everybody together and you talk about addressing the harm or redressing the harm what role does forgiveness play or let me change that is forgiveness and essential element of and effective restorative justice i see catherine shaking her head so at either of us could take this but bet in fact what you're trying to do  is have the victim feel that the harm has been addressed and i think it's pretty much up to the victim just i mean for forgiveness i think aaron has a good phrase in a letter say it but but it isn't essential the learning piece is essential  on a school basis and certainly in a criminal justice situation it's really having that harm addressed and you had a great phrase for it yeah i often like to say that it's a happy byproduct of what we do or not they choose to forgive this individual well beyond our process and sometimes that happens while people are in our process and they clearly say you know i forgive you to the other side and sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it might happen depending on the type of offense there are people who have used not specifically with c for a j but there are people even in massachusetts who have used her sort of justice with the responsible parties after homicide and you can imagine that to get to the point where you might or might not say that you forgive the other person kelly for telling us to have such an intensely personal feeling then i guess i could see where a process may or may not lead to that end so it makes sense when you say it's it's a happy and remember the exact phrase but it's a happy byproduct but not necessarily a but not a primary objective correct correct yeah i have another question how do you dress this notion that restorative justice is simply a way to be soft on crime and i imagine you've heard that question before yes or you know magine doing law enforcement training and training police officers i've heard it more than one time there are lots of questions around that because because that is one of the most frequent misconceptions have restored of justice but when you actually talk to the people who have gone through the process and when you talk to police officers who sit in the circle they support it because it is harder then going to go for it if you've ever thought of something that you've done wrong in your own life even take it down to the simple personal level it is hard to sit across from the person that you've done something wrong to and to talk about how do i make this right yes or how do i fix the hard how do i draft the harm yes but it's also a way to keep it within the community day i st learned from a police officer who said he was general real hard on crime lock him up kind of guy and he said it was so much easier we were talking about young people to take the child to teen to court and then i was done i'm all through and he said with this process that person stays in the community and he's one of our young people so it's really our responsibility to kind of handle that within our own community so goes back in some ways to sort of that tribal concept of we have to figure out how to make this better so that this person can stay in our community as a good active upstanding citizen so it's police officers who st learned about this and i think it was really important so with the recent belmont against racism panel that was how the district attorney marian ryan even mentioned that one of the reason she supports this process and promotes this process is that she has seen real transformation of the her between parties in a circle in a way that's different than proceeding through the quarter process she she gave a great example you know for people to understand she said ok so someone's house is broken into and something is stolen and the dictum then gets to sit across from that person and say why did you choose my house and if you go to court you don't know that  safe in my own house still or did you was i just randomly chosen and you know where's that piece of jewelry you stole from from me it was important so you know just to give examples you don't do that in the court you don't get to hear you know why and in january four bars part we one of the most important parts to be part of this community is we need volunteers to train and so that's an ongoing thing so people want to be a volunteer to be circle leaders the training is through c four r j dot org and you can sign up at any time they have periodic trainings but again as we talked it's important to have community buy into this and participants to make this really work so that's one piece and absolutely that the training see kasia trains that we do you were hoping to have two or three in two thousand and nineteen and we're always looking for people from the local communities and since belmont it's a new partner we only have one or two you currently and we want more and another thing to think about if you're if people are interested in supporting this work but don't have the time to commit to volunteering we are nonprofit and so it's really important for us to find different ways throughout the community to find support whether that be grants foundations individual donors who feel like this is important work that's important to make it possible that's great thank you reasonably confident that we here in belmont will hear more and more about in the coming months and years i want to thank you the listeners for listening in to community conversations today you can access community conversations on the b m c podcast network and media dot org and you can also find community conversations and i changed by searching for the b m c podcast network you've been listening to community conversations i'm your host roger coulton i'll talk to you again next time that myself a little bit so i'm working with i'm trying to get super and desist and superintendent she said send me the information i sent it to her and i do have and i have read it i'm going to send it to some of the i'm going to send it to some of the teachers i know at the high school but it might be worthwhile to send it to somebody on the school committee to which would be no other option because we d so that's very complicated because one the little minds are not adult minds two of them their parents their parents have to be involved they have to give permission three's a bully or the bully sometimes has more power and so you're talking about and you think you're talking about an unequal relationship because you're talking about somebody who has tormented another person who and the tormentor holds more power than the other kids or sometimes it's more and also i worked in schools and a lot of time their mental health issues involved and so people and so people don't understand the mental health problems of kids in school so a lot of the kids that i had we had problems with had underly and you can't say that to people you can't say but but if you look at c four r j they have a whole brochure online on their website and it shows a pyramid so what aaron was saying is you have these circles early on to sort of have a process that the kids are familiar with and then the next one is just for smaller incidents that aren't really you know major stuff you can handle it with and that you know a teacher's you know they gave an example of a teacher child conflict with a child thought like the teacher was making fun of him and she just was a tease you know what i mean but he misinterpreted her teasing as you know and so then in a conversation they can work that out and then the other one is of course the very top is when an actual horrible incident and to some degree they do use this there was at the high school under dan richards who mine knew better they had and sort of the n word being used and the kids were brought in into other  kids of color went and they sat down and they talked it out over time the parents also came in and had a conversation but eventually you know the kids worked it out you know what the training stuff learning this would just go in with that library with you know i think would be great for this especially for high school because they're not they're showing suspension and you know as belmont against racism we know in general throughout the world