Giving the Community a Role in Corrections

Derek Miodownik, restorative systems administrator for the Vermont Department of Corrections, talks about the state’s innovative experiments in community and restorative justice, including Citizen Reparative Boards, which give panels of community members a role in working with misdemeanor offenders, and Circles of Support and Accountability, which link community members with parolees convicted of serious crimes. ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi. This is Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation, and welcome to another New Thinking podcast. Today I’m speaking with Derek Miodownik who is the restorative systems administrator for the Vermont Department of Corrections. DEREK MIODOWNIK: Hi. Thanks for having me. WOLF: Absolutely. Vermont has quite a reputation for innovative thinking in the area of corrections. And so, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the philosophy that guides you and about some of the interesting things that you’ve been working on. MIODOWNIK: Absolutely. Yeah. I think Vermont’s a state that’s had to play to its strengths, and one of our strengths is our relatively small size that we still have a real sense of community and town, and active citizen participation in all sorts of civic life. But specific to corrections, one of the ways that’s becomes expressed for years now has been through citizen reparative boards that have been operating since at least ’95, I think, here in Vermont, where individuals who’ve been convicted of misdemeanors have for a long time now been required to appear before a volunteer citizen board. So, of course, you’re talking about a restorative justice approach and philosophy that has really taken roots here in Vermont. And we have, over the past several years, begun to apply that not only on the low level of the offense scale but also on to the more severe cases, and specifically, the re-entry process. WOLF: So you started with the reparative boards in Vermont, which focused on misdemeanor offenses. Is that correct? MIODOWNIK: That’s right. I’d say that’s where, as a state, we kind of cut our teeth. WOLF: And how widespread are they now? MIODOWNIK: We’ve got 76 individual community reparative boards. WOLF: What does that consist of? These are volunteers who do what with the offender? MIODOWNIK:Well, it’s really predicated on the notion that the person is showing up and at the very least saying “Yes, I did it.” So they’re not fact finding. The conversation begins from the perspective of “How do you think other people were harmed?” And it’s done not in a didactic way but I would say in an educational and informative and a very personal way. And then, “What do you think you have to offer in the way of repairs?” And if they’re individual victims who’ve chose to participate in this process, first and foremost, what do they want, what are their needs? WOLF: Give me some examples of the kinds of the kinds of misdemeanors and then the kinds of responses that panels come up with. MIODOWNIK:So yeah, again, we’re talking primarily about low-level offenses. That can include shoplifting, DUIs. WOLF: And what would the sanctions perhaps be? MIODOWNIK: An example might be—I know there is a guy who had shoplifted from a video store. This is a guy struggling to keep his store going. He came to the board and expressed just that, that this isn’t just a business to him, but that it’s a business that’s hard for him to run, that he built at a time when that medium, frankly, was a lot more popular, that he’s got children. So all of a sudden, when you have somebody removing the barricades of their life and saying “Hey, your decision to take six DVDs? Let me tell you about my 16-year-old daughter and let me tell you about my 18-year-old that I sent to college.” And you know, all of a sudden, in a way a gift is being offered, a gift of connection. You know, in this case, ultimately, the guy who ran the store, he needed some help. He needed some help at home. He was working a lot. He had injured his back, which prevented him from mowing his lawn. And you know, an agreement was reached that this guy would work off his obligation through, you know, through a prescribed number of hours, just showing up, mowing this guy’s lawn. In terms of a happy ending on this one, a fairy tale ending, this guy ended up getting a job working at H—- Video in South Burlington, Vermont. WOLF: And H—- Video was the victim? MIODOWNIK: Yes. WOLF: The victim owned that store? MIODOWNIK: That’s right. That’s right. WOLF: Well, it is a happy ending because I was going to say that it sounds like a lot of effort on all parts to resolve something that sounds like a rather minor offense. MIODOWNIK: You know, on one hand, there is definitely an outlay of effort. But on the other hand, the absence of that helps to contribute to some pretty larger-scale matters that we see play out time and again with folks who don’t respond very constructively to low-level misdemeanor sanctions, and ultimately, either continue at the same level of severity or sometimes ultimately escalate. So from a prevention perspective, it’s effort and the time well spent, and it’s primarily driven by volunteers who are doing that because, again, they live in that town, and it’s not academic to them. WOLF: We’ve been talking about the response to misdemeanor – MIODOWNIK: That’s right. WOLF: …offenses and the Department of Corrections of Vermont is also addressing re-entry issues, offenders who have committed more serious crimes who are right now returning to the community. You’ve developed a program there that’s also rather creative and involves the community as well. So maybe you can tell me a little bit about that. MIODOWNIK: We responded in 2002 to what was called the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. This was a federal initiative to provide states with money specifically to enhance or promote their best thinking around offender re-entry. And to us, it became a natural extension to build upon this culture of restorative justice, of relational justice, if you will, and apply that where frankly the stakes are higher. So we have, over time, created an infrastructure of what we call community justice centers. And these are actually the places where many of the volunteers that I mentioned on these reparative boards are organized and trained. So basically, we sub-granted the first round of money to justice centers to do a design phase. WOLF: So did you end up with different programs all across the state? MIODOWNIK: Well originally, there was some variation. Yeah. And to some degree, there’s still some. One community adopted a mentoring approach. But several other locations began to get excited about a model that was coming out of Toronto called COSA. COSA stands for Circle of Support and Accountability. And basically, some folks up in Toronto began working with sex offenders who had maxed their sentences and were being released with no support whatsoever or no accountability for that matter either. And so, the COSA model is rooted in the notion of “no more victims”. And the COSA methodology is rooted in a blending of accountability and support. Again, this goes back to some pretty basic restorative principles that say if you provide a lot of support for somebody, i.e., encouragement, positivity, but accountability so direct limit setting, having to answer for, you know, in this case your whereabouts or your behaviors. Then you’re into an area that has the greatest potential for effecting positive change. WOLF: So how has it played in Vermont? How many of these teams, these COSA teams do you have, and are they, in fact, working with sex offenders? MIODOWNIK:We didn’t restrict them just to sex offenders although we definitely worked with many sex offenders. But we took a look at just what was the level of connectivity that these folks have when they’re coming back to a place of very few connections. That was the main kind of driver of whether or not it made sense to invest that type of volunteer resource. Basically, about 50 individuals who came out during 2005 through 2007 were involved for at least a year. Out of that original 50 most, over at least a year period, were very successful. Guys who had come in and out many times before were staying out far longer than they ever had. Those who were re-incarcerated were re-incarcerated for really harm reductions behaviors and I actually think that this is one of the best things that COSA is doing, frankly. They preempt the more severe offending behavior by virtue of their knowledge and relationship to the offender so that if the guy has a condition that he can’t drink but goes out and violates, he may tell his COSA “I went out, you know, I had beers last night.” Or they may start asking him questions that yield that information. And that’s actionable information. There is no secret kept between the “core member,” who’s the offender, if you will, and the volunteer. So people h...