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Fall 2014
Circles of Support and Accountability
Pilot project in Multnomah County provides a road map for sex offenders to re-‐integrate into the community while working toward the primary goal: no more victims. Pages 2-‐3
Editor’s Tip: Looking for more insights and perspectives on restorative justice? Check out Howard Zehr's blog with regular posts from Howard Zehr and guest bloggers.
Learning from Oregon Practitioners: RJCO Listening Project RJCO is excited to present a preview of the coalition’s first state-‐wide listening project aiming to find out how to best serve the needs of RJ practitioners in Oregon. To complete this project, RJCO is working with conflict resolution graduate students and staff from Portland State University and University of Oregon. The project will be conducted in three major parts, starting in November 2014 with anticipated completion by June 2015.
Step one: A survey will be disseminated in electronic form to the widest possible selection of RJ practitioners in OR, collecting demographic information and asking questions such as; What would be the most valuable functions that RJCO might provide to help practitioners in the state? Which barriers could a professional organization help your program overcome? Step two: Focus groups will be convened utilizing the volunteers elicited through the survey.
Step three: Interviews will be conducted with core group members about the priorities identified in the focus groups in order to identify strategies and tactics for moving forward. The research report will aggregate and present the findings from each phase of the research and present conclusions and recommendations. Please stay tuned for more details about the listening project. If you would like more information, please contact us at [email protected].
RJCO Quarterly Restorative Justice News for Practitioners
In this Issue
Page 1 RJCO Listening Project Introduction
Page 2
Mediation Works: VOD Outcomes
Page 4 Thinking for Change: Restorative Justice in Polk County
Page 6
Circles of Support and Accountability
Recommended Reading
Page 5 Restorative Peer Courts: Center for Dialogue and Resolution
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Fall 2014
Worst of the worst. That’s how some people think of sex offenders. And there is no denying that sexual violence is among the worst crimes humans commit. But we are learning that the isolation many sex offenders face in the
community can increase their risk of returning to their criminal behavior from before prison, which doesn’t keep anyone safer.
Early this year, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon (EMO) and Multnomah County embarked on a collaborative proposal to serve sex offenders returning to the Portland area from Oregon Department of Corrections facilities. They set about to create Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) in Oregon to provide more community support for offenders reentering society. The hope of all involved partners is to reduce recidivism and achieve the CoSA mission: no more victims.
History of CoSA
Twenty years ago in Ontario, Canada, a Mennonite pastor was contacted by prison officials to
help support a high-‐risk sex offender being released into the community. The offender had attended his church once or twice years earlier; the pastor didn’t quite remember him, but the offender had mentioned him as the only person on the “outside” who might help him. Realizing the man would be returning to the community and concerned about his reoffending, the pastor organized a small group of volunteers who successfully supported the offender, alongside correctional officers and service and health professionals. The man did not re-‐offend through the rest of his life, and CoSA was officially launched.
Circles of Support and Accountability: Friendship beyond Prison Walls Pilot CoSA Program Launches in Multnomah County By Rev. Audrey deCoursey, CoSA Program Coordinator
The hope of all the involved partners is to reduce recidivism and achieve the CoSA mission: no more victims
Since then, the program has been replicated in cities across Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States, including in Vermont, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Washington. Studies have shown recidivism rates decline by over 70 percent, while volunteers enjoy meaningful service and core members report gratitude for the social support they might never have found otherwise. Throughout its development, CoSA has retained its community-‐based approach. Also central to its success is strong faith-‐based support, even though the content is not religious or from a particular faith tradition. The program follows a restorative justice model, with the goal of healing both individuals and a community after violence. The vision of CoSA is that sex offenses are not just private matters, they are community matters, and communities can and need to play a role in decreasing future victimization.
The power of community support
The transition from prison back into a community is a time of great stress and adjustment. A sex offender can face particular challenges upon release, such as finding housing and employment, exacerbated by a serious, public criminal record that makes many people wary of hiring a sex offender or having him move to their neighborhood. In addition, his social connections have often been severed by his offenses and length of incarceration. Criminal justice research identifies key factors that contribute to the risk of reoffending, including low social support, criminal peers and associates, negative attitudes, and isolation.
Criminal justice research identifies key factors that contribute to the risk of reoffending, including low social support, criminal peers and associates, negative attitudes, and isolation.
Continued on page 3
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Fall 2014
Continued from page 2
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Circles of Support and Accountability help reduce risk in concrete ways by offering the core member (offender) healthy relationships with people without criminal histories, pro-‐social leisure skills, attitudes of hope, and a source of purpose to work toward outside of prison.
Volunteers who form the inner circle are provided with extensive training about sex offenders and boundaries. They come from diverse faiths and backgrounds, but together they model healthy relationships and socialization for the core member.
Volunteers from the community are organized into circles that meet regularly with the core member during the first year out of prison. Circles provide a forum for the core member to discuss his unique challenges upon re-‐entry, from securing employment to encouragement to stay with treatment plans. These seemingly simple interactions help break down
social isolation and enhance community engagement, to reduce the risk of re-‐offending.
While other criminal risk factors — like substance abuse, unemployment, and lack of housing—are not issues CoSA addresses directly, inner circle volunteers support their core member emotionally as he
works through these struggles. The inner circle of offender and volunteers is supported in turn by an outer circle of professionals who address needs beyond the scope of the circle. The outer circle—including parole officers, counselors, faith leaders, recovery sponsors, prison chaplains, and housing advocates—provides links to services that offenders need as they transition out of prison.
At the heart of CoSA is a testimony to the power of healthy relationships, which can transform lives, strengthen communities, and help keep our vulnerable members safer. You are invited to join Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon in this new program, working
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toward our goal of creating communities with no more victims.
Get involved in a circle
At the heart of the CoSA mission is breaking the cycles of abuse and violence. As part of the new CoSA program in Oregon, we are recruiting volunteers to join CoSA circles. This sort of volunteering is not easy and not for everyone, but it is life-‐changing, healing, essential work for those who are ready to embrace the challenge.
Volunteers are placed into teams of four to six volunteers and matched with a core member, who participates voluntarily. Once the circle is developed, ongoing meetings begin through the core member’s first year out of prison. As an EMO staff member, I (Audrey) coordinate the Circles and support volunteers in their service. The CoSA Oregon program employs the consultation support of internationally-‐recognized CoSA experts, psychologists Dr. Robin Wilson and Andrew McWhinnie.
As testified throughout the increasingly global CoSA network, appropriate, healthy friendship can transform lives. Many people have no trouble forming healthy, mature relationships with their peers, but for some offenders that sort of relationship-‐building takes more intentionality. A circle may be the only place they contact people who care about them and aren’t paid to be with them. The power of these relationships is amazing, leading people to discover meaning and purpose, without resorting to the criminal behaviors of their past.
To learn more about CoSA Oregon contact Audrey deCoursey at (503) 988-‐8580 or [email protected] and visit our website at http://www.CoSAOregon.org.
At the heart of CoSA is a testimony to the power of healthy relationships, which can transform lives, strengthen communities, and help keep our vulnerable members safer.
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Fall 2014
Innovative curriculum helps youth take control of their lives by learning more effective ways of thinking.
By Ken Braun, Executive Director Community Mediation Services for Polk County Over the last six decades, cognitive behavioral theories and interventions have been introduced, researched, and applied in various human services fields, including corrections and juvenile justice. A clear body of evidence has emerged to show that these interventions positively impact individuals, helping to create change in both thinking and behavior. In the corrections field the targeted behavior is a reduction in reoffending, and cognitive behavioral interventions have been found to be an evidence-‐based practice for
achieving this goal by researchers and practitioners alike.
This program combined cognitive restructuring theory with cognitive skills theory to create an
innovative and integrated curriculum designed to help individuals take control of their lives by learning more effective ways of thinking. Thinking for a Change has been the subject of many studies and has routinely proven to be effective in reducing recidivism when implemented with integrity by adhering to the recommended lesson plans and methods of instruction.
The three components of Thinking for a Change are: cognitive self-‐change, social skills, and problem solving skills. All three components are defined as a set of skills that can readily be detailed by the various steps required to accomplish the skill. Cognitive self-‐change teaches individuals a concrete process for self-‐reflection aimed at uncovering antisocial thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs.
Social skills instruction prepares group members to engage in pro-‐social interactions based on self-‐understanding and consideration of the impact of their actions on others.
Thinking for a Change (T4C) – An Overview
Problem solving skills integrates the two previous interventions to provide group members with an explicit step-‐by-‐step process for addressing challenging and stressful real life situations.
Community Mediation Services for Polk County (formerly known as the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program) has partnered with the Polk County Juvenile Department to offer a bare bones understanding of the program including basic communication skills to the parents of the youth involved with the T4C program. The additional component for the parents assists them in working with their youth to help them succeed, not only in the completion of the program, but in successfully integrating the learning into their regular decision-‐making and behaviors. Once the parents understand what their youth are being asked to undertake, they become partners with the juvenile officers and in fact, see them as allies instead of the enemy.
For more information about the work in Polk County, Contact Ken Braun at [email protected].
Thinking for a Change has been the subject of many studies and has routinely proven to be effective in reducing recidivism...
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Fall 2014
Peer court guides youth to repair harms and make positive choices
Tim McCabe, Restorative Justice Programs Manager Center for Dialogue and Resolution Innocent until proven guilty by a jury of one’s peers. This is the basis of our criminal justice system, an appropriate and just forum when guilt is questioned. Often missing from this equation, however, is true accountability, especially in the juvenile court system. We are taught not to admit guilt in this system, which results in our not taking responsibility for the crime. Yet, when the crime is committed, it is not only committed against the victim, but also the community.
The Center for Dialogue and Resolution operates the Restorative Peer Court (RPC) where youth offenders can be heard by a “jury” of their peers. For more than thirty years, CDR has been a driving force for restorative justice in Lane County. By creating a space to heal wounds opened by crime, restorative justice
empowers victims, offenders, and the community to learn about the impacts of crime in a way that is deeply personal and effective. Restorative Justice provides the opportunity for real accountability to be taken within processes designed to meet the needs of those involved.
Even in its infancy, RPC is far surpassing expectations with juvenile success and reduced recidivism. In fact, in 2004 Lane County Division of Youth Services completed a comparison of cases that involved youth court and those that did not. Youth court programs both reduce crime and save money. A Lane County report from 2004 on Youth Courts noted that the efficacy of youth courts produced over $325,000 in cost savings when examining the probability of re-‐offending.
Restorative Peer Court: Real Justice and Accountability for Juveniles
Focused on accountability, RPC is based on indigenous group conferencing models including Native American healing circles and Maori (New Zealand) family group conferencing processes. RPC provides offenders with a process that encourages frank discussions on the harms of one’s actions and how to fix those harms. Throughout the process, we often see a dramatic difference in a teen’s disposition and a realization that they have both the support and the tools to make better decisions.
The “jury” or peer panelists ask open-‐ended questions to hear about what happened, who was impacted, and how the offender can mend the harms of their actions. Rather than fines and time served, teens are assigned community service, apology letters, alcohol and drug classes, essays or projects, or parent/teen mediation. Moreover, offenders have an opportunity to participate in how the harms can be mended.
RPC has strengthened community ties and provided a much needed positive peer group for a large number of teens. Aside from the great statistics, RPC is helping families. One mother expressed that after the RPC process she recognized her child again, that this process has empowered her daughter, and affected the whole family for the positive. RPC meets kids where they are and provides valuable opportunities for self-‐improvement and in-‐turn creates a safer community.
For more information, contact Tim McCabe at [email protected]
By creating a space to heal wounds opened by crime, restorative justice empowers victims, offenders, and the community to learn about the impacts of crime in a way that is deeply personal and effective.
Fall 2014
Recommended Reading Restorative Justice: What it is and is not (article) As restorative justice gains traction in schools nationwide, defining what is -‐ and what is not -‐ restorative justice has become a crucial objective. Rethinking Schools suggests that we should be thoughtful and thorough in implementing restorative justice policies and practices. Walking the Talk: Developing Ethics Frameworks for the Practice of Restorative Justice (booklet) Susan Sharpe, leading academic in the field of Restorative Justice, discusses ethical considerations for restorative justice practitioners and organizations. Just Schools: A Whole School Approach to Restorative Justice by Belinda Hopkins (book) In this practical handbook for educators, Belinda Hopkins presents a whole school approach to repairing harm using a variety of means including peer mediation, healing circles and conference circles. The book includes guidance for group sessions and examines issues and ideas relating to practical skill development for facilitators.
Positive Impacts Mediation Works Tallies Participant Experiences
Upcoming Training
Resolutions Northwest Presents: Artful Facilitation for
Productive, Inclusive Groups
December 8-‐10, 2014
2½-‐day workshop for facilitators, managers, community leaders and advocates. Training includes how to understand, design for and manage group dynamics by grounding the work in themes of inclusion, connection and clarity of purpose.
For more information, click here
Mediation Works has been working in partnership with Southern Oregon University’s Criminology Department since 2009 to look at the efficacy and impact of the restorative justice processes on youth offenders and their victims. Topics such as perceived levels of satisfaction, equity, restoration, and shifts in attitude are being evaluated through pre-‐program, post-‐program, and follow up surveys. Of the 95 victim surveys and 197 youth offender surveys that have been collected, the current data shows :
Participant Satisfaction
·∙ 94% of victims and 90% of youth offenders were satisfied with the process ·∙ 95% of youth offenders would recommend this process to others and 98% of victims would choose to participate again if they had to do it over. Perception of Justice
·∙ 95% of victims said that dialogues make the justice process more responsive to their needs. ·∙ 93% of youth offenders said that having the opportunity to meet with their victim made the justice system better. Victim Impact
·∙ 98% of victims said that the dialogue allowed them to express their feelings about being victimized. ·∙ 97% of youth offenders said that as a result of the dialogue they have a better understanding of how their actions affected the victim(s).