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Victim Supports

San Francisco’s newest District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, is promoting restorative justice options for all victims of crime. "I want to give every victim of every crime in San Francisco the right to participate in restorative justice if they choose to," he said. "It's going to take time, and it's going to take work, and we're going to have to see how many victims want to engage in the process. Some won't, but this is about putting victims first."

As reported in a 5-minute NPR feature on All Things Considered, Boudin's reformist views were shaped by his personal story. Like more than half of all Americans, he has an immediate family member behind bars. "Years now, decades, of visiting my parents behind bars taught me hard lessons about how...devoid of compassion [the criminal justice system] is. It's not healing the harm that victims experience. It's not rehabilitating people. And in many ways, it's making us less safe."

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Announcements

Dr. Mark Umbreit, past NACRJ president, was recently ranked among 50 notable social workers in United States history. This was announced by the International Association of Schools of Social Work. Mark was also ranked among the 50 most influential contemporary social work faculty in the U.S., by the Journal of Social Service Research based on the depth and range (throughout U.S. and 29 countries) of his restorative justice practice, teaching, research, and publication of 11 books and more than 200 other publications, including many training videos and films. In 1994, he founded the first university-based center for restorative justice in the U.S. the Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota.

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Notable Read

A recent NPR radio report on October 10, 2019, by Tovia Smith presented a new perspective that is not heard too often:  "Growing Efforts Are Looking At How - Or If - #MeToo Offenders Can Be Reformed" (listen to the 7-minute audio version).  This report features a man who voluntarily offered to be a surrogate offender in several "vicarious restorative justice" dialogue processes that included women who had been victimized by sexual assault. 

Assisting these opportunities is a professor from Cal State University, Fullerton, Alissa Ackerman, who also teaches a course called "Sex, Crime, and Culture."  As a proponent of restorative justice, Ackerman has extensively researched how sexual offendering can benefit from appropriate conversations. "No matter what somebody has done, no matter what somebody has experienced, their voice is important in understanding why it happens and what survivors need."

A powerful example of this work is now presented through a TED Talk, "Our Story of Rape and Reconciliation," which involves a man who took full responsibility for the harm he caused on his former girlfriend. 

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In Remembrance

This last summer saw the death of Judge Gordon McConnell who allowed two drunken teens the chance to have a restorative option long before the word 'restorative' was part of the justice lexicon. This well-documented case from 1974, in the Waterloo region of Ontario, planted seeds for what eventually led to the seminal work of Howard Zehr and others in the Elkhart region of Indiana. At the request of Mennonite Central Committee probation officers Mark Yantzi and Dave Worth, the two offenders were able to apologize directly to 22 small-town victims who experienced vandalism and property damage. They also offered to pay back restitution which they fully did within the following year. 

McConnell, though having a reputation for being tough, immediately bought into the idea of the offenders taking responsibility for their actions rather than going to jail. Later he joined the board of Community Justice Initiatives that started in the wake of this landmark case. Read more about McConnell's life as well as see a film about the Elmira case.

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Announcements

One of the 'moving' highlights of the NACRJ Conference in Denver, Colorado, was a set of dramatic readings put on by Motus Theater. A group of seven people who experienced the harshness of our criminal justice system paired up with professionals in the justice system, jointly reading true life stories written by the 7 participants. Listen to a downloadable audio version of this presentation, and stay tuned for a forthcoming video version.

We now have 18 audio recordings from our Denver Conference!

Also featured during the conference was plenary speaker Adam Foss, a prosecutor from Boston who has also spoken in TED Talk circuits. Christina Swarns presented on "Us" As Victims, Survivors & Offenders: Strategic Advocacy with Restorative Justice Practices.