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     Celebrating 20 years of excellence in Restorative Justice • 1985-2005

                      

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CJI’s Restorative Justice based programs include the Victim-Offender Mediation Program, designed to meet the need for healing and closure in people affected by the most serious crimes in the Canadian Criminal Code, Educating for Peacebuilding, a Restorative Action program in Langley schools, and the Restorative Youth Services programs, which take a restorative approach to assisting youth in the local communities of Langley and Surrey. 

EDUCATING FOR PEACEBUILDING

Restorative Action: Changing School Culture

Restorative Action is changing the culture in British Columbia schools. In June 2000, a new partnership was born when the Langley School District #35 (SD35) and Fraser Region Community Justice Initiatives Association (CJI) agreed to work together to explore how Restorative Justice principles might be applied throughout the local school system.  The focus on these principles, which we call “Restorative Action” in the school context, encourages responses to harm and discipline issues that are needs-based and promote healing and accountability.  This initiative grew out of the need to create safe schools through an effective, sustainable approach that does not rely on punishment and isolation to deal with discipline issues. The concept was that Restorative Justice based approaches could give frustrated parents and educators alike additional strategies for effectively addressing misbehavior, the underlying issues responsible for that behavior, and harm that occurs as a result.

To this end, we offer regular presentations and educational sessions about Restorative Action to raise awareness across the school district. In Secondary Schools, we have developed a curriculum called Conversation Peace for students, parents and staff, which prepares the trainees to be called upon when conflict in the school arises. We have trained students and staff at three secondary schools to date and are pleased to see how conflicts are being handled in these schools. In elementary schools, we have offered Restorative Action training and awareness to the teachers, who then bring the teaching to their classrooms. We also have staff from CJI and the school district prepared to respond restoratively to more serious issues that arise in school environments. More recently, we have developed an elementary school resource, Talking Peace which offers an easy-to-use guide for building safer, more respectful classroom environments.

Through all of this, we are aiming for a systemic effect of changing school culture, but in the day-to-day reality, we are encouraged by individual students, parents and educators who are learning skills and changing their worldview one by one. We have often heard students say they liked our training because they are now more able to listen to their friends and show caring and empathy. One secondary student remarked, “My friends say I’m listening to them now. They don’t know what’s happened to me!” An school teacher stated to us, “I never really took the time to listen before without any personal agenda. I was amazed when the person thanked me for listening and said she had better clarity on how to solve her problem…when I hadn’t told her to do anything!” Our goal of culture change will take years of consistent hard work. However, we are encouraged to continue because of individual interactions that reveal how developing a restorative mindset can be life-changing for the individuals and those around them.
 

For more information, download a copy of the program's brochure.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Coast Capital Savings Foundation for this program.

 
RESTORATIVE YOUTH SERVICES 

2004 marked the beginning of CJI's implementation of Restorative Youth Services (RYS) in both Surrey and Langley communities. A combined initiative between CJI and partner agencies Family and Youth Services Society in Langley and Pacific Community Resources in Surrey, RYS consists of three components:

• Restorative Community Service
• Community Capacity Development   
• Mentorship

 
VICTIM OFFENDER MEDIATION PROGRAM (VOMP)

Based on a foundation of Restorative Justice values, the Victim Offender Mediation Program (VOMP) focuses, at a post-incarceration stage, on remaining accountability, healing and closure issues for those involved in or affected by traumatic criminal offences. While the program can and does involve face-to-face mediation in many cases, the ‘mediator’ is not an intervener but rather a supportive facilitator of therapeutic dialogue. The assessment and preparation processes are therapeutic in nature, and informed by current theory and clinical practice regarding offender treatment and victim trauma recovery.

The purpose of the Victim Offender Mediation Program is to assist people affected by serious crimes by:

  • empowering them to address issues and concerns surrounding the crime and its consequences;

  • providing the parties with a process which can lead to new insight, thereby reducing levels of anxiety, and contributing to therapeutic gains;

  • addressing questions and concerns regarding the offender’s eventual release into the community;

  • providing sensitive staff who are committed to being agents of healing and restoration for those who suffer crime’s effects.

In the years since the VOMP program’s 1990 beginning, both victim and offender participants have consistently reported gains in their own healing, recovery and rehabilitation. Researcher Tim Roberts, in his 1995 evaluation of VOMP for the Solicitor General of Canada, reported that this program had one of the most positive evaluations of any program researched in his 30-year experience: 

“There was unanimous support for the program from all victim and offender respondents interviewed in this study. ‘Support’ means that respondents found considerable specific and overall value in the program, felt it was ethically and professionally run, and would not hesitate to recommend it to others. This level of support is remarkable, considering that VOMP involves parties who are initially polarized, and who could be expected to hold divergent views about the value of the program. VOMP also exists in a polarized political context of offender, victim and feminist advocacy, each of which has legitimacy in itself, and which one might have expected to find voice in at least one or two disappointed participants.”

Training based on the Victim Offender Mediation Program is available.

VICTIM OFFENDER RECONCILIATION PROGRAM (VORP)

After more than 20 years, this program has been suspended due to lack of funding. Prior to its termination in July 2004, CJI's Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program was one of the oldest, continuously-operating programs of its kind in North America. While the program is no longer operational, the principles upon which it was based are fundamental to CJI's philosophy and CJI continues to offer training based on the agency's experience.

The idea of victim offender reconciliation had a Canadian genesis. It was the brainchild of Dave Worth and Mark Yantzi, two young Kitchener, Ontario men. The process brings together victims and offenders, and functions to address the facts and feelings in a case from the point of view of each of the principal participants (use this link for information about the VORP process). While there are impressive statistics documenting offenders' completion of the agreements negotiated in these meetings, the primary benefit recorded by both victims and offenders is “the opportunity for the offender to meet the one he or she had wronged” (Gibson, 1986). 

 
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