A free public information session will be held Tuesday, August 21 from noon to 5 p.m. at Cook County Higher Education to learn about restorative justice and how one can become involved with the process, if they so wish.
What is restorative justice?
It’s a term widely used but little understood.
Like most things it had humble beginnings.
Some historians believe restorative justice was born from a 1974 case in Kitchener, Ontario. Authorities tried something new when they caught two teenagers who had vandalized 22 people’s property. Instead of jail time, the two teens were required to meet with the people they had harmed, explain their actions, apologize and pay restitution to every one of them.
The kids learned a hard lesson, the victims felt compensated and the community began a healing process from this incident.
As word slowly got out, other places in Canada, Europe and America started to implement the system. It didn’t really take off, however, until 1994 when the American Bar Association endorsed victim-offender mediation, a program usually associated with first-time offenders and minor crimes.
Today more than 30 states have restorative justice programs.
How does it work?
When one person harms another in a way that requires law enforcement to get involved it might be determined that the best way to get a good result for all parties is to use restorative justice. Through this process offenders are held directly accountable to the people they have harmed.
The goal is to restore, to the extent possible, the emotional and material losses of those harmed by providing a range of opportunities for dialogue, negotiation, and problem solving.
The ultimate vision of the program is one of healing.
To learn more, attend the public information session at Cook County Higher Education in Grand Marais on Tuesday, August 21.
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