When two students get in a fight in their high school hallway, it’s unusual to see them soon afterwards playing basketball together.
Or when a juvenile vandalizes property at an elderly woman’s house, the two don’t usually sit down and hash out their differences.
But Montgomery County, Pa. is one of many counties across the nation attempting to soften the typically hard-line calls for justice from victims.
“A couple of months ago, one kid knocked out another kid’s tooth because he had asked out his girlfriend on Instant Messenger™. There had been two years of problems between these two kids. They had this meeting [as part of the Victim Offender Conferencing program] and they’ve been able to be cordial to each other in the halls at school,” said Shoshi Goldfus, program coordinator.
“Actually, it’s an unrealistic expectation for them to walk out as best friends. But it is realistic to expect them to choose their behavior patterns,” said Goldfus, who added that fighting at schools accounts for many participants in her program.
Another typical offender is the juvenile vandal, such as the one who defaced an elderly woman’s property.
“The woman victim was very nervous going into the mediation. But I think she saw a general remorse, and the kid ended up snow shoveling her driveway for her,” Goldfus said.
The idea of bringing together a victim of a crime and the person who committed that crime is part of a fairly recent restorative justice campaign by local jurisdictions and groups such as the international Victim Offender Mediation Association (www.voma.org). The first such victim offender program was started in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in 1976 and, as of 2000, there were more than 1,200 programs world-wide.
Montgomery County is one of eight counties in Pennsylvania with just such a program. It was started there two years ago by Winnie Baklund, director of mediation and training at the county’s Mediation Center. Goldfus said Baklund first approached the Board of Commissioners about 10 years ago with the idea.
“It’s taken some time for people to accept it,” Goldfus added. “The people in Juvenile Probation were skeptical. They were concerned it was soft-pedaling. But the probation officers have seen it develop over the past two years and they support it. The police and the public also support it. It just took time to build a reputation for itself.”
Now Victim Offender Conferencing receives referrals from everyone from schools to police to attorneys to the offenders themselves, who are often interested in making amends for their actions, Goldfus said. The sessions usually begin with the victim and offender setting expectations for themselves. Then, facilitators, parents and adult-support persons frequently join the proceedings.
The program costs the county approximately $67,000 annually. It was funded during its first two years by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) and is being funded this year by both private donors and the Montgomery County Mediation Center. Goldfus said one of her next projects is to build a Web site for the program.
