Areas of Work

Welcome to the . . .
Community Justice Initiative

Since 2003, the Council on Children and Families has worked to integrate community justice principles in state and local policies and practices in an effort to promote safe and healthy communities and to enhance public confidence in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The need for this work emerged from findings of a juvenile delinquency intake study that was conducted by the Council and the Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives. In part, this study identified barriers to providing services within the juvenile justice system to better meet the needs of troubled youth and their families.

The Council, has provided restorative practices training to over 1,000 individuals and has provided technical assistance to over 100 state- and local-level initiatives. In addition, Council staff are working with Fight Crime: Invest in Kids New York to implement demonstration projects in five counties that employ innovative prevention and intervention approaches that aim to prevent placement of youth in the juvenile justice and adult criminal systems as well as to successfully return youth to communities after placement.

The Community Justice Philosophy

Community Justice is an approach to crime and delinquency that includes the community in criminal justice processes and is concerned with improving the quality of community life and addressing the needs of victims. Community Justice is defined by three principle elements:

• A focus on community, emphasizing partnerships between the justice system and community organizations;
• Use of restorative justice, which repairs the harm caused by crime; and
• The effective reintegration of offenders to enhance public safety and reduce recidivism.

Community Focus and Partnerships Community Justice emphasizes partnerships between the justice system and local communities in order to strengthen crime prevention efforts, increase citizenship involvement, and build community. By focusing on local communities, diverse organizations can collaborate with one another and local volunteers.

Restorative Justice Community Justice initiatives are designed to reduce the harmful effects of crime. In particular, they embrace the principle of restorative justice where criminal harms need to be fully identified, and whenever possible, repaired. Criminal harm can be personal, such as the emotional trauma of victimization; harm can be material, such as damage or loss of property; and harm can be communal, such as material damage to public property, the public risk created as a result of drunk driving, or even the decline of community as citizens withdraw from civic life due to fear of crime.

The central tenet of restorative justice is that offenders have an obligation to the community. This is done in two ways. First, offenders must take full responsibility for the consequences of their crime by making amends to the victim and the community. Second, they must demonstrate their ability to be a community member in good standing by complying with supervision requirements and seeking opportunities for success as a law-abiding citizen.

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Common Restorative Practices

In the United States there are four common restorative practices:

1. Victim-Offender Meetings (also referred to as Victim-Offender Mediation or Dialogues): This practice brings a victim and offender together in a safe environment to discuss the crime. Victims have often found this to be a helpful component of the healing process.
2. Family Group Conferencing: Conferencing originated in New Zealand and Australia. Like victim-offender mediation, conferences bring together victims and offenders together in a safe environment. In addition, conferences include supporters of the victim and offenders, such as friends or relatives.
3. Community Reparative Boards: Reparative boards are composed of small groups of citizen volunteers who meet with offenders and victims to negotiate a restorative justice contract that the offender must complete as part of their sentence. Reparative boards were developed and are extensively used in the State of Vermont.
4. Sentencing Circles: Sentencing circles have their origins in the Native American and indigenous peoples of the U.S. and Canada. They bring together victims and offenders in a larger community forum to discuss the crime and negotiate a restorative justice agreement. Circles are now used extensively in Minnesota.

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