Restorative Justice Community Action

Adult programcommunity conferencing and circles: rjca creates a forum in which people impacted by crime/harm in community and meet with those who are harmed by these behaviors to discuss the impact and determine restitution. It is through these community forums that rjca achieves its primary objectives of effectively addressing harmful behaviors and helps prevent further criminal legal justice involvement and strengthens community well-being. Through our programming, rjca provides opportunities for community connection and shared problem solving by addressing the incidents, their context, and the persons referred. As referred participants (offenders) recognize the impact of their behavior, they receive support and often connect with the community in positive ways we continue to build after the covid 19 pandemic isolation. We are evaluating from closed cases in fy24. Of those cases, 141 adult offenders enrolled in rjca programming, a 34.3% increase from last year. Of 118 enrolled conferenced cases, 114 were conferenced (93.8% attendance rate), and 107 cases (90.7%) were successfully closed. Referred participants completed 213 hours of community service, gave 95 apology/gratitude letters, and donated 3 bags/items of in-kind donations in the communities that were affected. They also completed 371 hours of personal development activities: 40 activities that were focused on connection to community; 41 activities related to mental health and well-being; 12 activities on career development; and, 32 activities toward education . This year, 193 community member participations by 54 volunteers who met primarily on zoom with rjca staff facilitators. These community members provided 567 hours of volunteer time. This is the second year of providing community circles of support and accountability for adults on supervised probation in hennepin county. The process is to establish a sense of trust and belonging for the participant to develop action steps toward their goals of moving off of probation. In fy24, 2 circle keepers (rjca staff) convened 17 circle sessions for 5 different referred participants with 2 assigned community members for each. There were 12 unique community members providing 107 hours of time with referred participants in in circle.

Rjca is the node agency for the mn trust network. This is to coordinate and help develop a hate based incident reporting and responding network through the support and collaboration with the national trust network. Rjca also has developed a 3-day training of a restorative mindset through a trauma and racial justice informed lens with mn peacebuilding leadership institute called cultivating community: restorative theory and practice. The first training of 12 included current volunteers and others interested in the practice.