‘Restorative Justice’ Offers a New Tool in the Criminal Justice System

Forrest Letzring and Dr. Tandie Mitchell.

By Laura Calverley

A relatively new concept in the criminal justice system offers the ideal tool to tackle crime, according to Dr. Tandie Mitchell and Forrest Letzring.

The longtime Ramona residents have directed and co-produced a television documentary called “Restorative Justice, Restoring Respectful Relationship,” to raise awareness and support for restorative justice and the San Diego Restorative Justice Mediation Program.

Restorative justice views criminal acts as acts of harm against people and communities — rather than the state — and brings victim and offender together to facilitate healing on both sides.

“Restorative justice looks at a situation where relationships are harmed and out of balance,” said Mitchell, director and co-producer of the documentary and president of the Amicus Project. “The victim and offender sit down, face to face, and the offender has to look in the eyes of the victim and understand what they have done. And it gives them an opportunity to set things right.”

The documentary consists of two parts of a four-part educational series on restorative justice. The first part, “An Introduction to Restorative Justice,” was taped at a Ramona Rotary Club meeting. It includes presentations by Pearl Hartz, who founded the mediation program, and Janet Allen Shaw, lead mediator of the program, in which they discuss how mediation is used effectively in the community.

“It gives the victim a chance to say what happened — to express how angry, how frustrated, how upset they are...and to ask ‘Why me?’ It gives the victim a chance to see the offender as a human being who made a mistake,” Shaw said in the documentary. “...Part of the benefit to the offender is to also see the other person as a human being whom they have harmed and to really understand the full impact of the harm that they have caused.”

The restorative justice mediation process has been found to be especially beneficial to youth who break the law, experts say, and it is the only program of its kind in California working with young people and their families in court.

“This would be great if it was used on all kids under 18,” Mitchell said. “Many kids go out and do things and they don’t know what they’re doing or the true consequences of their actions.”

The San Diego Restorative Justice Mediation program was started in 1993 and has since helped many victims and offenders. Restorative justice offers an alternative to the mainly punitive, offender-focused justice system that now exists, according to Mitchell.

“There is an actual contract worked out between the offender and victim that states what restitution will be paid to the offender and the community, or what the offender will do to repair the harm that they caused,” Mitchell said. “Where the program has been instituted, the success rate is phenomenal. Recidivism is very low.”

The second part of the 30-minute documentary demonstrates a mock mediation between victim, offender and the offender’s parent. The demonstration was taped before a group of Rotary members and a panel of community guests, including Rev. Leland B. Jones, St. Mary’s In-The-Valley Episcopal Church; Luan Rivera, Yellow Ribbon Suicide Program; Dr. Hilda Gray, elder abuse victim advocate; Robert Hensley, trial support supervisor; Pastor Paul Nelson, Grace Community Church; and Tom O’Donnell, Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing.

The documentary has been a labor of love for Mitchell and Letzring for two years. The two fellow Rotarians are family friends who met years ago when Letzring was filming a video on the retirement of Tandie’s father, Dr. Charles Mitchell, one of the last of the “old country doctors.”

The next part of the educational series, expected to be completed in December, discusses how the process of mediation and restorative justice are effectively used and looks at the program’s success rate. A fourth and final installment, which Mitchell and Letzring are planning, will focus on restorative justice at the international level. It will serve to raise funds for a peace scholar working with children in Uganda as well as a Rotary International Peace Scholar.

“Restorative Justice, Restoring Respectful Relationship” can be seen at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, and 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 24, on Cox Cable channels 18 and 23.

For more information on restorative justice and the San Diego Restorative Justice Mediation Program, call Geri Collins, acting executive director of the program, at (619) 280-1993 or visit ww.sdrjmp.home.att.net.

Photo Courtesy of Forrest letzring