Neighborhood Organizations and Restorative Justice

Sunday's Minneapolis Star Tribune featured the following front page article: Few Get A Path Out of Trouble. The article highlights the very different outcomes for two teens, one whose case goes through the traditional court system, and the other who goes through a restorative justice program. The article helps illustrate the difference restorative justice and related diversion programs can make in the lives of disadvantaged youth.

In the 1990s, neighborhood organizations began developing the first restorative justice programs in Minneapolis. The earliest, and most successful, was developed by a partnership of Stevens Square Community Organization, Citizens for a Loring Park Community, Elliot Park Neighborhood Inc., and Whittier Alliance. This program was spun off into what is now known as Restorative Justice Community Action, with Gena Gerard as the first Executive Director of RJCA. (The article quotes the current director of RJCA, Cynthia Prosek.)

SSCO first proposed to other neighborhood organizations an ambitious plan to engage three interns through the U of M's Neighborhood Planning for Community Revitalization program to better understand the intersection between street crime, the criminal justice system and neighborhood work.

The neighborhood partnership's restorative justice planning received national attention because it was the first to involve adult offenders, and also to address much more serious livability issues including prostitution. Restorative justice programs in other parts of the country focused on juvenile offenders and “low level” crimes such as littering.

It should be noted that at the same time we were setting up the restorative justice program, we were meeting with judges, prosecutors, the Chiefs of the City and Park Board police departments, precinct commanders and others to explore the gaps in the criminal justice system, what we felt was an urgent need for police reform, calling for the Chief to adopt a Community Oriented Policing model.

Neighborhood organizations were thirty years ahead of the City on these issues, and this is one of the many ways neighborhood organizations have contributed in major ways to the well being of the City.