Brattleboro Citizens’ Breakfast
October 16, 2015
Gibson-Aiken Center
Restorative Justice
“Community … is made from conflict as much as from cooperation; the capacity to resolve conflict is what gives social relations their sinew.” David Cayley, The Expanding Prison 1998 (quoting Nils Christie, “Conflicts as Property,” 1977)
Darah Kehnemuyi, Executive Director
802-251-8142 Video Link
http://www.brattleborocjc.org/
Darah Kehnemuyi, a lawyer with 35 years as a trial attorney, mostly as a public defender, has had broad experience with humanity. Moving to Brattleboro from Maryland 10 years ago, he began volunteering at the Brattleboro Community Justice Center (BCJC). He was interested in mediation work as he had started a community mediation program in Maryland and thought something similar might be possible in Brattleboro. Over the years changes occurred. Programs became directly tied to funding from the VT Department of Corrections (DoC) and state grants from the Federal Second Chance Act (2007).
Recently, there have been discussions that too many people are incarcerated. In Vermont there have been efforts to return to the state those who have been contracted to serve their sentences in out-of-state prisons, making room in this state by discharging others who should be released.
Darah volunteered with a Reparative Panel and a Circle of Support and Accountability (CoSA). The Reparative Panels differ from the criminogenic system of retributive justice in that they recognize that crimes rend the fabric of society and the main job at hand is how to fix that.
An offender is referred to a Reparative Panel by the court, the police or State Attorney and meets with this panel of civilians for a period of four months working to answer the same four questions:
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who was harmed by the offense?
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how was that person(s) affected?
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how can that be fixed or made right?
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how can this be prevented from happening again in the future?
The discussion on these issues results in an agreement with the offender outlining concrete steps to be taken. This results in some creative solutions. Darah recalled one in which a young man arrested for trespass channeled his energy into local political activity. In past years when more DUI cases were referred to panels, a ride-share program was an outcome to address the lack of public transportation after the bars close.
Sometimes, a victim attends the panel. When referrals from court occurred sometimes a year or more after the criminal case was settled, victims would not attend because they had moved on with their lives and were not interested in re-visiting the offense. Now, due to more direct referrals, there is more contact with the persons harmed; they are invited to be part of the reparative process if they wish to.
There has been consolidation of community justice centers at the State level through the Community Justice Network of Vermont (CJNV). Brattleboro was one of the first community justice centers in the State; there were some four to eight centers in existence at that time. Now there are 20. The Executive Director of the CJNV [Johannes Wheeldon] is a professor from Norwich University. The effects of this consolidation may be good to a certain extent, while not ignoring grassroots issues. Rep panels are all made up of people from the local community.
There were between 44 – 48 rep panels held last year. Talks are ongoing with the Police Department and the State’s Attorney to increase the number of direct referrals. The Chief of Police has asked about community mediation: dealing with neighborhood disputes with the hope that long term animosity can be resolved or transformed.
The federal Second Chance Act funding supports the CoSA program which is more intensive in that the Circle meets with person released from prison, the “core member”, once a week. Last year there were seven to nine CoSA’s operating. Jim Cecere is the Reintegration Specialist at the BCJC. He is “great.” He has experience navigating systems, has helped returning prisoners get government-issued ID’s, access Veterans’ and SSI disability benefits, and regain driving privileges. The CoSA’s also help the core member with transitioning to independent living. National statistics show reductions in recidivism due to the effectiveness of these programs.
Darah would like to see more mediation and community mediation; there is a need for training in this area. The Windham-Windsor Housing Trust has expressed an interested in tenant-to-tenant mediation.
Speaking from personal experience, Darah stated that in mediation, the difficult thing to do is to listen, really listen deeply, to the parties. That’s when transformation happens. If the mediator can reflect what the parties are saying, that is, practice reflective listening, eventually the people participating can do it. Perhaps, by the third session, the mediator can step out of the conversation and let the parties find a way between themselves to resolve the conflict. Ultimately the hope is that the parties have learned skills that carry over outside the formal mediation sessions.
Summary of Question and Answer Session:
BCJC has had and continues to have connections with the Restorative Justice Program at the high school (BUHS); the Coordinator Michael H. Szostak was formerly employed at BCJC. Darah welcomed the idea of connection with the Contact program at SIT.
Another idea for a connection was the peer-to-peer RJ program that Green Street School Principal Mark Speno is bringing together.
The BCJC serves the “greater Brattleboro area”; there are justice centers in Bellows Falls and Springfield. Currently, there are about 40 volunteers, with 30 involved in reparative panels and eight in CoSA’s. Volunteers would be expected to receive three four hour training sessions to participate in either program; one of the CoSA trainings is a day long program. Much of the training deals with how to be a good listener.
The bottleneck on correctional releases affects the number of CoSA’s and that problem is the difficulty in finding housing for anyone, let alone housing that satisfies the Department of Corrections (DoC) rules as to what constitute appropriate housing for a particular releasee. The BCJC could handle more CoSA’s if DoC released more prisoners.
Darah recommended the October 15 PBS Newshour program [@ 22.05”. The program continued on October 16 @ 20.23”.]
One attendee related a positive outcome from even an unsuccessful attempt at a neighborhood mediation.
CoSA’s not only help core members materially, but help them “walk through stuff” such as relationships or lack of relationships; how to approach one’s parole officer; family reintegration and helping in other way through off site meetings.
Accountability to the community is an integral part of the CoSA’s; the byword is “no more victims.”
“New justice center director takes helm,” Chris Mays, Brattleboro Reformer, September 25, 2015
“From volunteer to director,” Olga Peters, The Commons, October 7, 2015
Also Related:
How should Vermont deal with habitual offenders? WCAX, October 23, 2015
