greater sense of achieving what is fair to victims. The evidence report- ed here suggests that there is a sub- stantial improvement in victims’ own sense of fairness when RJ is added to the tools of justice than when RJ is not available.”8


In light of such evidence, and much more like it available on the internet, and given our state’s own relative maturity with re- storative justice in comparison to other states, I think the time is ripe for Vermont and the leaders of our three branches of government from the top down to take re- storative justice seriously as a state policy of Vermont.


Is It Being Taken Seriously? If restorative justice is already the state


policy then is it not currently being taken seriously? The answer is no—not as a via- ble tool and lens that is being used in our criminal justice system with crimes above the level of misdemeanors. As a teacher of inmate legal education classes in the Ver- mont correctional facilities, I am invariably not surprised to discover that every new student in my class (either a detainee or sentenced inmate) has never heard about restorative justice. No judge or state’s at- torney or defense attorney has ever ex-


plained the concept of restorative justice to them or held out the possibility of a re- storative justice process as a means to re- solve the charges against them. I often tell detainees to mention the restorative justice statute to their defense attorney and have always been told (if the inmate ever has the chance of even having the discussion) that the attorney, in essence, had no idea what the inmate was referring to. An attorney once told me bluntly the restorative justice statute was “fluff.” Bobby Sand, the former state’s attorney for Windsor County, while cognizant of the statute during his time as a prosecutor, likewise said the statute had little, if any, impact on his daily work as a prosecutor.9


In my conversations with people active in the restorative justice field throughout the state, from Department of Corrections officials, to community justice center and court diversion personnel, I have been told the number of felony cases referred to re- storative justice facilitators active in those three institutions or agencies is virtually non-existent unless as a form of reparative probation or in community reintegration for inmates.10


Even misdemeanor referrals


vary widely from county to county. Yvonne Byrd, director of the Montpelier Commu- nity Justice Center, feels that referrals de- pend on the personality and philosophical outlook of each county’s prosecutor—not


from any statewide consensus on how to implement the goals of 28 VSA § 2a, the restorative justice statute.


For a concise overview of the cur-


rent state of restorative justice referrals and practices, I refer the reader to an ar- ticle available on the Center for Court In- novation’s website: “Involved Communi- ties Support Vermont’s Restorative Justice Panels.”11


In the article Yvonne Byrd, Karen


Vastine, the community justice coordina- tor in Burlington, and Marc Wennberg, di- rector of the St. Albans Community Justice Center, explain how volunteers help craft restorative responses to crime and conflict in Vermont through the centers. One of the reasons for the wide-scale


disregard of a Vermont’s “state policy” by criminal justice officials—judges, state’s at- torneys, and defense attorneys—certain- ly must be because there is no mandatory language anywhere in the restorative jus- tice statute. While it is clear to me that the statute’s stated goal implies ongoing ef- forts should be made by all those parties to implement restorative justice process- es at all stages of criminal adjudication (in fact, the statute says as much, “[t]he policy goal is a community response to a person’s wrongdoing at its earliest onset”), no hint of what office or branch of government will direct such “ongoing” efforts is mentioned. Furthermore, the fact that the legislature


www.vtbar.org


THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2014


21


Restorative Justice


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