 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Good evening and welcome to this special edition of the Amherst Weekly Report from Amherst Media. My name is Claire Healy. Today's report focuses on a restorative justice model being implemented in select areas of western Massachusetts. Six police departments in western Massachusetts, as well as the Northwestern District Attorney's Office, are adopting a restorative justice model in collaboration with the nonprofit Communities for Restorative Justice, or C4RJ. Through this model, police departments will refer people charged with a crime who qualify to the nonprofit, where they will go through C4RJ's program instead of court proceedings. Participants will engage in restorative justice practices aimed at addressing harm done to the community through having the individual work with volunteers in what C4RJ calls the circle process. In the circle process, as described on their website, C4RJ meets with affected parties, community volunteers, and a law enforcement officer, first in an opening circle, then the progress enters the agreement phase where everyone meets to work on the agreed upon obligations. Finally, everyone convenes in a closing circle to reflect on progress made. The website states that most circles are held in police departments, with an officer always included in the circle, and the officer or department decides if the officer is uniformed and slash or armed. We talked to Erin Freeborn, Executive Director of C4RJ, about the history of restorative justice and C4RJ itself. She described how C4RJ has run the same program in eastern Massachusetts for years, following its inception in 1997 after being founded by two conquered residents, Gene Bell and Joan Turner. Freeborn said that C4RJ is currently working on training volunteers and police partners. She said that the program works with different parts of the system, but is independent and not housed in any one section. She said that while restorative justice models are often criticized as being, quote, soft on crime, the process is intense and difficult. The reality is that this is a lot of work, and if anybody can think of a time where they've harmed somebody and where they had to go face to face with that individual, that is some of the hardest work any of us can do. And by building that into this formalized process and having that happen in circle, it was really, really hard for responsible parties to go through this process and program. The three criteria that we have for restorative, for moving forward with the case is that we have to have a responsible party who's willing to accept responsibility. We have to have an impacted party who's willing to allow the process to move forward and that can look very different, that involvement can look very different based off of a person's comfort level. And then the third thing is that we try our best to provide as safe a process as possible. And that includes also sort of evaluating if there are any substances involved in the incident. We make sure that people have the opportunity to have a substance use assessment by an independent clinician of their choosing. And so these are all things we try to put in place before we bring people together in circle. We also spoke with Becky Michaels, director of community prosecution projects at the DA's office about her decision to help start the implementation of this model and what she hopes it does for the community. You also have a way of thinking about resolving cases and reforming harm that's very different from going through the court system. That is a way of really involving the community in determining how can the community be repaired. And part of that also includes what happened to this person to have them get to a point where they're committing this crime. How did the community perhaps fail this person in some way? And how can the community help this person move past whatever state they're in that caused them to commit this crime and no longer be in that place where they would commit crimes like that. So it's also a preventative, I don't want to say it's a tool, it's much bigger than a tool, but it can also prevent crime. When asked how this model fits into the context of ongoing protests across the country against racism and police brutality, Michaels emphasized the community aspect of this model and said this is about, quote, giving voice to the victim, offender and community in resolving harms. She also said in response to how she might answer skepticism about this model that the program is not housed in the police departments and that the role of the DA's office is only in facilitating C4RJ coming into the community. So I think some of the criticism and concern that it just is sort of another arm for the police to use their discretion and to sort of continue the systemic racism that we've seen, I think that's not quite fair in terms of the way that the program works because the program takes cases away from the police, away from the court system and puts them into the community. We spoke with Amherst Police Chief Scott Livingstone about his decision to have the Amherst Police Department participate in this program, which he said was, quote, an easy one and discussed familiarity with the model after Amherst's program working with juveniles. He said the current process doesn't always solve the problem after court proceedings and that he sees this as giving an individual who is charged criminally the opportunity to understand their crime and how it impacts the community. What we're hoping for and I think what we're expecting to see is that there's less chance of recidivism and more opportunity for an individual to participate in changing things that they might not have realized they were affecting other people's lives or if they were committing crimes based on events that had happened in their lives, whether it be substance abuse problems or who knows any host of individual problems. Now we have an opportunity and a mechanism in place to correct those, those issues. And I think from a police perspective, we see that as an opportunity to help an individual who may be or probably is in need of assistance. So there's more people working on helping an individual out and understand why they committed the crime, okay, and how do we move forward and make it so it doesn't happen again. South Hadley Police Chief Jennifer Gunderson said she was honored to be asked to take part in this program and hopes this model helps her department be better at serving survivors of crimes and that it reduces recidivism. It is not often that a victim or a survivor, an assaultor is able to really speak to the court about the impact of the incident on them. And then that then it's not an opportunity for an offender to really hear the impact and the harm that they've caused. So really, first and foremost, I'd like to be a better service for victims of crimes, but also with offenders. Like if this could be a tool to reduce recidivism basically somebody that continues in the, you know, cycle of offenses. And if it sort of breaks that cycle, like if it is something that makes sense, I mean, you know, part of the criminal justice system is about corrections but like how well are we correcting somebody's behavior and just, and perhaps having this dialogue, you know, the circles that restorative justice practices offer, you know, something may click, you know, with an offender, and they may truly understand the harm that they've caused, and then they wouldn't reoffend that, you know, that would be a goal. She also pointed to the precedent of juvenile diversion programs in South Hadley, and how the success of that program makes her optimistic about expanding similar models. When asked how this model fits into nationwide calls for a change in policing, Gunnerson described a desire to be better and the present time as a window to take the risk to try new models. I think, you know, there's a connection just like we want to be better, like we want to be better and we recognize and we hear from our communities that we must be better. So I think the connection is that, you know, now we say the policy window for us to take the risk to try this, to allocate the resources to try it because, you know, we'd have to be deaf not to hear from our communities that we're missing something, right, that we're missing something. So, you know, I do think it plays a role in maybe a lot of us taking a risk right now in doing something that may or may not work out well. You know, I'm optimistic, you know, that with helping victims of crimes, and to help offenders understand their impact, you know, could it positively reduce biases in the criminal justice system, where we would see less bias on how the criminal justice system treats both victims and offenders? I think we may see that as well. She said that she met mostly support from her department, but some skepticism around how to hold someone accountable if they don't go to court. Her answer to that was an inquiry into how well courts are holding people accountable. And my response is, well, how well do we think the courts have held offenders accountable? Like, you know, tell me where we think that that has worked, you know, and then, you know, I've heard things like, well, you've got somebody who's had multiple offenses and they keep going to court. And my response back to that is, well, I guess court isn't working, right? Let's try something different. The locally based advocacy group, DFUN 413, has been critical of this project, particularly in its use of funding from police departments. Each police department has committed to paying a yearly fee for administrative costs of the program. DFUN 413 created a petition titled, Policing is Not Restorative that has 114 signatures. It demands that, quote, any restorative justice program take place outside of the racist institution of policing as this institution has a history of producing harm in our community. We spoke with Zoe Crabtree, an organizer with DFUN 413 about this petition and her views on the model and restorative justice in general. She said that the first thing that drew her attention was a quote from Chief Livingstone about helping individuals understand the harm done to communities and individuals, which she said contradicts DFUN 413's view of the criminal legal system as more often about, quote, outside factors in people's lives that have to do with racism, poverty, lack of opportunity, and that lead people to behave in a way that is criminalized. She stated the goal of DFUN 413 is wanting to take as much money from police departments as possible, and she believes that a program like this distracts from that goal through the, quote, co-opting of activist language by police departments. She said DFUN 413 supports restorative justice disconnected from police departments and pointed to an organization in Holyoke called Palante as an example of one model that does so. She said that she sees this program as being in the hands of people who don't understand restorative justice and harm caused by the criminal justice system and that misunderstanding could lead to further harm on participants in the circle itself. As such, one alternative she'd recommend to the DA's office would be to not prosecute in cases that they would have referred to this model. She encouraged viewers to pay attention and get involved in local activism and politics. We also spoke with Lois Arons, founder of the Real Cost of Prisons Project, a national project that focuses on decarceration, conditions of confinement, and extreme sentencing. Arons described her first reaction to the model, which she read about in the news, as one of concern, saying she had never heard of restorative justice program that started with the DA's office or with law enforcement. The projects that I'm familiar with usually get initiated by an organization that is based in the community and, or at least, if it's not based in a community, it starts off by hearing the input and needs of a community rather than starting with law enforcement. The idea that the same people that are policing people are the people that are making the determination about who should be, would be eligible for a restorative justice practice is just really out of the ordinary. I don't know what else to say about it, and the other part of it that seemed very odd to me is that the police are involved in the actual restorative justice circle. She also described concern about whether or not this model would distract from other efforts to implement restorative justice models. By doing this, not just here, but every place that they've done it, it's kind of like a way to do this kind of end run around community demand for police accountability and policing. And so it's a way of sort of undercutting or undermining what it is communities might be asking for. And so, I mean, it has this other kind of odd quality about it coming when it has. She described restorative justice as a process rooted in community demand and said that this model is antithetical to the practice of restorative justice because of the degree of police involvement. It just seems so, so antithetical to what other, how other restorative justice programs are based and who's in charge of them and who conceived of them and, you know, who's, who's the leadership of them. I mean, all of these things seem just highly, highly, highly questionable to me. When asked how this program could be adapted to address her concerns, she said that she does not believe it can be and that it should be, quote, scrapped. For anyone interested in learning more about restorative justice, she recommended that they look into an organization called Common Justice based in New York. We will continue to follow this story as it develops with conversations around the community and as the model is implemented. That's all for this week. Thank you for tuning in to the Amherst Weekly Report. I'm Sarah Healy and we'll see you again at the same time next week.