New Program Puts A Different Face On Crime Meetings Can Help Offenders, Victims, Advocates Say

Local juvenile justice officials are touting a program that puts offenders face-to-face with their victims as a way to stop youths from re-offending.

Advocates claim such meetings are therapeutic for both victim and offender. Mediation gives victims a say in the justice process and a chance to question offenders about why they were chosen.

“When they get answers to these questions they get to sleep nights,” said Martin Price, an internationally-known victim-mediation advocate. “They get to sleep nights even when the answers are worse than imagined because for most of us knowing is better than not knowing.”

Offenders, in return, learn how their actions hurt their victims and the community. They also work with their victims to set up a restitution agreement, which can be monetary, community service or direct service to the victim.

Studies have shown offenders are more likely to fulfill a restitution agreement they help set up, Price said.

Kootenai County juvenile probation has been arranging victim-offender mediation meetings for about a year, said Jim Crowley, a juvenile probation officer. The program operates on a shoestring budget and has handled about 35 cases.

“We are leaps and bounds ahead of juvenile justice departments in other parts of the country,” Crowley said. “There’s a lot of people that are envious of what we’re doing and want to know more about it.”

The department is hosting a three-day conference on the topic to train other probation officers and hopes to enhance its victim-impact program. Participants include representatives from Bonner, Benewah and Shoshone county juvenile probation departments, which hope to start similar programs.

Victim-offender mediation fits into the juvenile justice process differently around the country. Some areas offer mediation before cases make it to a judge.

Critics of victim-offender mediation call it soft on crime. They question how many crimes lend themselves to mediation and worry the sessions could easily get out of hand.

Price counters by pointing to studies that show the victim-offender mediation is successful.

More than 95 percent of the cases mediated in the U.S. and Canada result in written restitution agreements, he said. Of those agreements, 90 percent are satisfied within a year.

Another study compared a group of offenders who went through mediation to a group that was willing but did not. Mediation cut the rate members of that group re-offended by four times, Price said.

Price also relates numerous success stories.

One involves a young fire-bug who set fire to an elderly woman’s home. The resulting blaze caused injuries to the woman and a firefighter.

The boy agreed during a three-hour mediation session with the woman to work around her house and, at her request, polish fire trucks and scrub the fire station floor.

Two years ago, the boy, now grown and working as a firefighter, was rewarded for saving someone’s life.

During another session Price mediated, three young boys agreed to meet people who had been driving cars hit with rocks they had thrown off a freeway overpass. One of the victims was a hulking man in his 20s who chased the boy down with a tire iron and held them for police.

At the meeting, the man said, “let me tell you why I’m here,” Price said. “I’m you and you’re me. I’m looking back at you and seeing me.”

One of the boys kept in contact with the man, who came to treat him like a little brother, Price said. They have remained in contact.

“These kinds of miracle stories don’t happen all the time, but they are semi-common,” Price said.

Crowley, who heads Kootenai County’s juvenile victim-offender mediation program, said it is applicable anywhere during the juvenile justice process.

Currently, mediation is offered in Kootenai County on a referral basis to willing offenders after their cases have been heard by a judge, Crowley said. Candidates must pass a screening process that gauges, among other things, their remorsefulness and enthusiasm to make restitution.

Victims have welcomed the opportunity to be involved, something criminal prosecution does not offer, Crowley said.

“It gives them an opportunity to speak their heart and their mind,” Price said. “Who better to hear it?”