From theory to practice

Very exciting day. One of the Things I Think Should Be Done Differently in the world (you know, that miles-long list of mostly impossibly big things) is actually happening, and they're looking for people to help, and it's something I can actually do, and I'm going to do it.

The idea is that when people commit crimes -- especially, but not exclusively, with young offenders and with crimes where no one is seriously hurt -- instead of the usual jail/fines/probation sentencing, you can actually work with the offender to have them make reparations to the people affected by what they did, and address the underlying problems that led to what went wrong. Many of the people trying to convince the criminal justice systems of the world to try this call it Restorative Justice. There's a good bit of research to show that it works. Here is a great big list of where you can read about it if you are so inspired.

So I'm going to be on a Community Accountability Board! Albany County is going to expand them from one current board in one neighborhood, to a bunch of different boards in various neighborhoods and outlying towns. I went to an all-day training today. It's a bit scary, it's a big responsibility. But I will be working alongside some folks I know and very much respect, who have been doing this for a while. And I think, I hope, I can learn to be good at it.

There's a ton I could say about the training itself. For now, just one exercise, which I invite you to try at home. One of the tricks about how this process works is that the offender has to really believe that the board members are for real. You can't stay aloof and lecture them about how their behavior affects "the community" in the abstract, you have to give them reason to believe that it matters for your own life. Which it does, but the connections are not always easy to see. So the trainer asked the folks who have already been on the board to list off what kinds of crimes they dealt with: drug possession & sales, physical assaults, property damage, theft, loitering, loud parties, sex trade, etc. And then we were each asked (in pairs) to articulate, for each crime: how does the fact that this happened in your neighborhood affect YOU?