Marathon County Restorative Justice Program in Weston, WI

iReport — This interview is with Carrie Vergin. She is the Coordinator for Marathon County Restorative Justice Programs, in Weston, WI. She has a Bachelor's in Human Services with a Social Work Certification. She is also entering the final year of her Master's in Criminal Justice. They are a nonprofit organization that attempts to bring victims of juvenile crime, and the offenders, together to work things out. The victim is able to express how they were affected by the offense directly to the teen. Not always the answer to the problem, but I think it helps. This helps the offender know that their poor choice affected a real person. Other counties she is familiar with that have Restorative Justice Programs similar to theirs are in Barron, Eau Claire, and Vilas County. She knows there are some other types of restorative programming in various counties throughout Wisconsin, but not sure they all do victim-offender conferencing.

We talked about how the state of the economy has affected their program. How did they deal with fewer funds? From their perceptive, was crime getting worse because of the economy? The numbers say crime has gone down in Marathon County. What do they see? Carrie shared with me that petty thief seemed to increase and offender's ages were younger. They hopes of the program continuing, beyond next year, was no guarantee.

Bringing offenders together, face-to-face, is powerful. I volunteer with this program and feel concerned about it staying afloat. There is less clutter in the courts, victims have more of a voice, and kids see that things need serious addressing. It is not the answer to crime, but I have seen some good things come out of the worse situations. Carrie shared with me how she become involved with the program:

"I did not pick the career, it picked me. I told God I wanted to work with kids in grade school...that I did not want to work with teens. He has a sense of humor and changed my desires. The county was looking for someone to take over a floundering program and thought because my husband was a police chief, I might find the program interesting. I viewed a tape about restorative justice with Dan and we both got excited about it. Hard to think of a more rewarding job. Love the kids and love helping victims return to some sense of normalcy."

Thanks for taking the time Carrie in sharing about your program and how the economy has impacted things. A big thanks to Goodwill for donating the space for this program. To learn more about it please visit the linked website.
Marathon County Restorative Justice Program began as a collaboration between Marathon County Department of Social Services and Children's Service Society of Wisconsin in 2004.

MCRJP website

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• carrie_vergin
• weston
• wisconsin
• crime
• victims
• teens
• restorative_justice
• philosophy
• health