Working Together for Youth:
Multi-Agency Integration of
Restorative Justice Programming
Fairfax County, Virginia has the nation’s 10th largest
public school district, educating 186,000 ethnically
and culturally diverse students. (See accompanying
chart.) Among the critical challenges facing the region
are high recidivism rates for juvenile crime, disproportionate criminal justice system involvement of minority
youth, high school suspension rates, and juvenile crime
impact on local communities. In recent years, County
agencies have partnered with the non-profit Northern
Virginia Mediation Service (NVMS) to create a cutting edge model for restorative justice, the Alternative
Accountability Program (AAP). The AAP integrates
the restorative justice initiatives of the county’s police
department, juvenile court, public schools and community service agencies. Still expanding, AAP has already
produced dramatic results for both juvenile offenders
and the participating agencies.
Reduced the number of youth who are court-involved;
• Held youth accountable for their actions; • Applied incident-specific responses for
each case;
• Reduced recurrence of criminal acts by youth;
and
• Provided support for victims to participate in
identifying how their harm is addressed; and
• Reduced the disproportionate number of
minority and special needs youth who enter
the criminal justice system.
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE MODEL
The Alternative Accountability Program (AAP) draws
on a basic restorative justice model developed by NVMS
in 2007, a model informed by foundational work by Howard Zehr and other restorative justice pioneers. Its core
features include voluntariness, self-determination and
confidentiality. It is a “pre-diversion” program, meaning youth referred to the program do not undergo any
formal juvenile court proceedings. Incentive for youthful
offenders to participate in AAP usually involves an interest in repairing harm. However, avoidance of a criminal
record drives many juvenile offenders and their families to embrace AAP as a process superior to the usual
time-consuming and costly juvenile court processes.
Referrals to the AAP are generated by police officers
who respond to juvenile offenses. Eligible offenses
include first-time misdemeanor and select felony
charges including trespassing, destruction of property,
larceny, harassment, unlawful photography and assault.
Drug charges, traffic infractions and violent assaults
are excluded from the AAP, but other programs includ-
ing service referrals are available for them through the
tradition juvenile intake process. Youth ages 10 to 17
are eligible for program participation, with the greatest
number of participants falling into the 13-17-age range.
AAP uses a two-phase restorative justice process,
comprising individual pre-conferences for the main
participants and a joint conference in the round for all
participants, typically lasting about 90 minutes. Collaborative agreements reached by the participants vary
widely and in a given case could include any myriad
terms, alone or in combination: restitution, community
service, apology letters to affected parties, and promises to abstain from offending behavior or undertake
behavior that averts offending behavior. For obligations that cannot occur until after the joint conference,
the facilitators carefully monitor compliance.
The AAP generally uses co-facilitation to share in the
tasks of managing the restorative justice process. These
facilitators are NVMS volunteer facilitators, juvenile
intake and probation officers, and facilitators employed
with FCPS. The program has recently implemented a
certification process to offer facilitators a clear pathway
to mastery of the restorative justice skill set. As the hub
of AAP administration, NVMS regularly convenes planning committee meetings including representatives
from each partner agency in order to promote ongoing
program evaluation and development.
ORGANIZING FRAMEWORK
What makes the AAP unique is its overall organizing framework, a carefully assembled public-private
partnership: four county agencies coupled with the non-profit NVMS serving as its organizational hub. While the
county agencies supply programmatic guidance, case
referrals and sometimes facilitators, NVMS provides
facilitators, training, mentoring, program coordination,
interagency data sharing and management of a case-based database. The AAP planning committee includes
representatives from each of the participating agencies. The committee also works with high-level county
decision-makers and state legislators as needed. For
example, AAP planning committee advocacy led to
Virginia legislation authorizing the carefully controlled
sharing of confidential police report information among
county agencies and entities like NVMS which operate
juvenile-oriented programs like AAP.
About the Authors
MEGAN G.
JOHNSTON
is Executive Director
of NVMS (Northern
Virginia Mediation
Service). Johnston
works with a team
of talented col-
leagues from NVMS
and local agencies
to grow Restor-
ative Justice (RJ)
services in addition
to overseeing media-
tion, facilitation and
training programs
and delivering
presentations. She
holds a Master’s
Degree in Peace
and Conflict Studies
from the University
of Ulster in Northern
Ireland. She has
been a member of
ACR since 2009.
by
Megan G. Johnston
and David T. Deal,
Northern Virginia
Mediation Service
(NVMS)
