Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye, at­tor­ney at law, me­di­a­tor and child rights ad­vo­cate, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Epiphany Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices, a train­ing and con­sul­tan­cy com­pa­ny, has an­nounced that new cours­es, In­tro­duc­tion to Restora­tive Prac­tices and Us­ing Cir­cles Ef­fec­tive­ly, will take place at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel on Tues­day and Wednes­day.It will pre­cede the train­ing course, Fa­cil­i­tat­ing Restora­tive Con­fer­ences, which is be­ing held for the fifth time and will take place on Thurs­day and Fri­day, at the same venue.

"The Restora­tive Con­fer­ence is re­ac­tive, in that it re­sponds to wrong­do­ing by bring­ing to­geth­er in a con­fer­ence, the of­fend­er, the vic­tim and their re­spec­tive sup­port­ers in an ef­fort to re­pair the harm caused by wrong-do­ing. It is used on­ly where the of­fend­er ad­mits to the wrong­do­ing or is found guilty and is will­ing to make amends," Thomp­son-Ahye ex­plained.

She said while, ac­cord­ing to Zehr, crim­i­nal jus­tice re­gards crime as a vi­o­la­tion of the law of the state and fo­cus­es on es­tab­lish­ing guilt and in­flict­ing pun­ish­ment, restora­tive jus­tice looks at a crime as a vi­o­la­tion of peo­ple and re­la­tion­ships and fo­cus­es on de­ter­min­ing what must be done to make things right and re­store bro­ken re­la­tion­ships.

It fo­cus­es on the needs of the vic­tim who has been hurt and gives that vic­tim a voice to tell the of­fend­er di­rect­ly the im­pact the of­fence has had on him/her, to ask ques­tions and have a say in what must be done to right the wrong. Sup­port­ers of both the vic­tim and of­fend­er are en­gaged in the process, as they, too, are af­fect­ed by the wrong­do­ing.

While the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem fo­cus­es on past mis­deeds, the em­pha­sis of restora­tive jus­tice is heal­ing of the par­ties who are in­volved in the wrong-do­ing and their fu­ture re­la­tion­ship. It pro­motes rein­te­gra­tion of the of­fend­er in­to the com­mu­ni­ty, rather than iso­la­tion and stig­ma­ti­sa­tion. Thus, it has been ef­fec­tive in re­duc­ing re­cidi­vism. Stud­ies have shown the sig­nif­i­cant ways in which restora­tive jus­tice has re­duced costs by low­er­ing the prison pop­u­la­tion.

Thomp­son-Ahye said what is even more sig­nif­i­cant is how the process has been doc­u­ment­ed as one that stops the "school­house to prison pipeline" by sav­ing young peo­ple from a life of crime."Restora­tive prac­tices, which in­cludes cir­cles train­ing is proac­tive," she said.

"As Wach­tel ex­plains, restora­tive prac­tices in­volve both in­for­mal and for­mal prac­tices that are used to build re­la­tion­ships and a sense of com­mu­ni­ty, pro­mote mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion and man­age con­flicts. Cir­cles has been very ef­fec­tive in build­ing so­cial cap­i­tal, the con­nec­tions be­tween in­di­vid­u­als (Put­nam 2001). Re­search shows that this train­ing has been used suc­cess­ful­ly to re­duce be­hav­iour­al prob­lems, in­clud­ing bul­ly­ing and has less­ened sus­pen­sions and ex­pul­sions, drug and al­co­hol use and even teen preg­nan­cy.

She added that fun­da­men­tal uni­fy­ing hy­poth­e­sis of restora­tive prac­tices is that "hu­man be­ings are hap­pi­er, more co-op­er­a­tive and pro­duc­tive and more like­ly to make pos­i­tive changes in their be­hav­iour when those in po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty do things with them rather than to them or for them."

Thomp­son-Ahye said the train­ing helps to build em­pa­thy by en­cour­ag­ing young peo­ple to talk about their feel­ings and teach­ing them how to re­solve con­flicts.Thomp­son-Ahye ex­plained that restora­tive jus­tice is a not a new con­cept but was used in in­dige­nous cul­tures by first Na­tion peo­ple all over the world as their method of jus­tice be­fore coloni­sa­tion. It was re­vived in the 1970's af­ter vic­tim/of­fend­er me­di­a­tion start­ed in Cana­da and spread to oth­er coun­tries.

To­day, in many ju­ris­dic­tions around the world restora­tive jus­tice and oth­er restora­tive prac­tices are be­ing used, es­pe­cial­ly in youth jus­tice sys­tems as di­ver­sion from court.

New Zealand was the first to pass leg­is­la­tion, The Chil­dren, Young Per­sons and Their Fam­i­lies Act in 1989. The Child Jus­tice Act 2008 of South Africa pro­vides for restora­tive jus­tice and the Crime (Restora­tive Jus­tice) Act 2004 in Aus­tralian Cap­i­tal Ter­ri­to­ry makes it pos­si­ble to use con­fer­enc­ing at all stages of the crim­i­nal jus­tice process from pre-tri­al di­ver­sion to pa­role.

North­ern Ire­land in­tro­duced youth jus­tice con­fer­ences in its Jus­tice (N I) Act 2002 and has been pleased with the out­comes. Oth­er coun­tries in Eu­rope, Asia and South Amer­i­ca have em­braced restora­tive prac­tices.

Many ju­ris­dic­tions use po­lice of­fi­cers to con­duct con­fer­ences and oth­ers in­volve po­lice of­fi­cers to out­line the of­fence com­mit­ted.Ter­ry O'Con­nell, the per­son who brought restora­tive jus­tice to the US from Aus­tralia was a po­lice of­fi­cer. O'Con­nell was al­so in­vit­ed to the Unit­ed King­dom in 1996 by the then Chief Con­sta­ble to present a sem­i­nar to over 100 po­lice of­fi­cers on restora­tive con­fer­ences and was sub­se­quent­ly in­vit­ed to train po­lice of­fi­cers in con­fer­enc­ing.