Compassionate justice

Coalition tries to improve the lives of juvenile offenders

By: Hilary Parker
   With the goal of improving the lives of juvenile delinquents and their victims, as well as New Jersey’s judicial approach to juvenile offenders, the Mercer County Coalition for Restorative Justice held a kick-off event Wednesday night at Trinity Church in Princeton.
   Featuring a keynote address by Sister Helen Prejean, author of "Dead Man Walking," the event offered an introduction to restorative justice and a plan for its future in Mercer County and New Jersey.
   "The alternative to vengeance is compassion," Sister Prejean said. "Compassion manifests itself as restorative justice."
   Restorative justice is a theory of justice that emphasizes repairing the harm caused by criminal behavior. It relies heavily on cooperative processes that address the needs of offenders, victims and the community in responding to and preventing violence.
   Sister Prejean also spoke out forcefully against the death penalty, and she urged attendees to lobby for an end to the death penalty in New Jersey. A report released by New Jersey Policy Perspective found that the state has spent $253 million on the death-penalty system since 1982, although no executions have been carried out.
   "What could you have done in New Jersey with a quarter of a billion dollars that you spent on a non-working death penalty?" Sister Prejean asked. After the event, Sister Prejean signed copies of her books and pledged to donate the proceeds from the evening’s book sales to seeking a moratorium on the death penalty in New Jersey.
   MCCRJ is an outgrowth of the Interfaith Prison Ministry, a group of roughly 10 local communities of faith that formed nearly 10 years ago. After investigating different forms of restorative justice, MCCRJ ultimately decided to focus on bringing a victim-offender mediation process to New Jersey.
   "The victim becomes the linchpin," said Dorothy Moote, board chair of MCCRJ. "The victim, in facing his offender, begins to see him not as this monster thing, but they begin to see a person."
   Through an interaction among the victim, the offender and a trained mediator, the result would be restitution separate from but overseen by the courts. MCCRJ plans to focus on juvenile offenders with minor offenses; Ms. Moote said the group would not seek to handle drug or violent crime cases anytime soon.
   MCCRJ organizers are hopeful that the Legislature will pass a restorative justice bill to establish victim-offender mediation in the state and select MCCRJ to participate in a pilot program. Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein (D-Plainsboro) plans to reintroduce a bill, A-849, to establish victim-offender mediation in New Jersey in the next legislative session.
   Assemblywoman Greenstein introduced the bill in the current session, which ends Jan. 10, and testimony was taken on it. But the bill was pulled prior to a vote, after representatives from the Administrative Office of the Courts expressed opposition to it. The AOC said the Juvenile Conference Committee, a program that has been in place since the 1950s, served the same purpose as victim-offender mediation.
   "We already have a program in place," said Daniel Phillips, legislative liaison for the AOC. "There’s not a lot of difference between them. We have 2,100 trained volunteers in 293 committees throughout the state. They resolve about 10,000 cases a year."
   Members of MCCRJ disagree, including board member Marianne McConnell, a lawyer and commissioner on the state Victims of Crime Compensation Board, who drafted the legislation Assemblywoman Greenstein introduced. Ms. McConnell said that when victims do attend the Juvenile Conference Committee — and they often do not — they are only providing input to the committee, rather than deciding the resolution of the dispute.
   Ms. McConnell said she hopes victim-offender mediation will become another option, in addition to the Juvenile Conference Committee, for juvenile offenders in New Jersey.
   "This is the best first step I’ve seen in 28 years of working in the justice system," said Drew Smith of the Juvenile Justice Commission’s Juvenile Parole and Transition Services. Mr. Smith, a trained mediator through the Victim Offender Mediation Association, said he has witnessed juveniles make greater transformation through a 5½-hour mediation process than through seven years in the court system.
   Explaining that the mediation process has been shown to lessen rates of recidivism, Mr. Smith also said a comprehensive restorative justice program could reduce crowding in New Jersey’s prisons and salvage thousands of young lives.
   Wednesday’s event coincidentally occurred on the same day Attorney General Peter Harvey mandated police departments statewide to adopt the "stationhouse adjustments" program.
   "The stationhouse adjustment process allows police officers to resolve minor disputes without the need to file a complaint with the court," Mr. Harvey said. "The goal is to effectively supervise our young people so that they make better decisions to avoid criminal offenses. We also expect this process to give victims of minor offenses a quick remedy."
   This program offers another approach to achieve the same result that the MCCRJ seeks to bring about through victim-offender mediation.
   "If we embrace them and allow them to be part of us, we will have less of them and more of us," Mr. Smith said.