The Beth-El Mennonite Church in Colorado Springs will host a restorative justice symposium Thursday and Friday September 24th through the 25th. This important event is sponsored by the El Paso County Bar Association, the 4th Judicial District, and the Colorado Springs School District among others. According to the Pikes Peak Restorative Justice Council, the purpose of restorative justice is “to enable victims, offenders and the community to repair harms and restore relationships.”

Many juvenile offenders, including some who are being held in prison for life, did not intend the level of harm they may have caused. Restorative justice recognizes that, regardless of intent and harm, healing the community, victims and the offender are worthy objectives. When a crime is committed, the community is harmed, victims are traumatized and offenders may simply be abandoned to a “corrections system” that fails to correct anything at all.

StopDirectFile.org sees restorative justice as an important step toward rehabilitating young offenders. According to Don Quick, District Attorney for the 17th Judicial District, “society’s number one responsibility” when a child commits homicide “is to make sure that kid doesn’t kill again.” There are many different types of homicide from manslaughter to circumstantial (felony) murder. Most often, it is not a child’s intent to commit homicide and yet children are tried as adults when a death occurs almost without question. As a society we can keep a child from killing again by putting them in cold storage for the rest of their lives. But that strictly punitive approach ignores–at enormous community expense–society’s responsibility to both the victim and the offender. Restorative Justice, on the other hand, treats both offenders and victims on a case-by-case basis.

According to one victim, restorative justice had enormously positive effects: “My family and I were able to see remorse and pain from the responsible party who killed my son [] in an alcohol and speeding related accident. Because of this, we were able to forgive him and exchange hugs and tears. We feel we now have the strength to heal and carry on [our son's] legacy along with many awesome memories.”

As stated in several previous blogs, StopDirectFile.org supports “comprehensive sentence reform that provides appropriate community protections by removing juvenile offenders from society (until they are no longer a threat); provides victims with a sense of security and justice (not revenge); and gives juvenile offenders an opportunity for rehabilitation (not cold storage).”

StopDirectFile.org feels that restorative justice is the all-important first step toward a child’s rehabilitation and we strongly endorse the Pikes Peak Restorative Justice Symposium.

For more information or to sign up for the symposium please visit the symposium page at www.pprjc.org or call (719) 640-1650. Space is limited so register today.