"Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice" at the Washington State Reformatory 

"Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice" (CVORJ) was a 14-week seminar held at the Washington State Reformatory from 1997 – 2000 funded by the Open Society Institute's Center on Crime, Communities, & Culture. The seminar brought together offenders, victims, and community members to read and discuss the book Restoring Justice (Van Ness & Strong, 1997), to tell personal stories about the aftermath of crime, and to engage in dialogue about offender accountability, reconstructing the lives of victims and offenders, the role of the community in corrections, and ways in which justice may be made more meaningful for victims, offenders, and the community. The victim and offender participants were not associated with the same crime/case. Many of the victim and offender participants had been involved in a violent crime. Victim and community participants included victims of crime or family and friends of crime victims who wished to speak with offenders as part of the healing process, victims who wanted to help educate offenders on the effects of victimization, and community members who were interested in victimology, victims rights, offender accountability, and in contributing to a discussion about new and creative ways of doing justice. Offender participants were volunteers who wish to learn more about the experience of victims and to be involved in an innovative prison program. The seminar was facilitated by Jacqueline Helfgott, PhD, Seattle University Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and co-facilitated by Madeline Lovell, MSW, PhD, Seattle University Associate Professor of Social Work, and Chuck Lawrence, PhD, Seattle University Associate Professor of Sociology. The seminars were evaluated by Dr Helfgott in conjunction with a committee of victim advocates, DOC staff and administration, Criminal Justice and Sociology faculty from Seattle University and Penn State, offenders, offender advocates, restorative justice advocates, and conflict resolution specialists. The program was funded by the Center on Crime, Communities, & Culture of the Open Society Institute.

The seminar was based on recent discourse on the concept of restorative justice and represented an attempt to apply the principles of restorative justice to the institutional corrections setting with community involvement and open dialogue between victims and offenders. Restorative justice has been referred to as a "radically different way of doing justice" that "has become one of the most significant recent developments in thinking about crime." In contrast to traditional visions of justice that center around retribution and the adversarial model, restorative justice offers a different framework for responding to crime that constructively addresses the natural antagonism between the rights and interests of offenders and victims. Central features of restorative justice are: Definition of crime as a violation of one person by another; focus on problem solving, dialogue, negotiation, restitution, and repairing social injury; community facilitation of the restoration process; recognition of victims' rights and offender responsibility/accountability; holistic understanding of the offender; removal of the stigma of crime through restorative action and reintegration strategies; possibilities for repentance and forgiveness, and direct involvement of participants. The central features of restorative justice and issues surrounding them are explored in the seminar through reading, discussion, and storytelling of participants.

The goals of the seminar were: (1) To create a space in the prison environment where offenders are provided the opportunity to express empathy and remorse and the tool with which to become responsible/accountable for past, present, and future actions; (2) To facilitate constructive communication between victims, offenders, and citizens so that justice can become more meaningful for everyone involved; (3) To contribute to new and creative thinking about justice and dealing with crime in local communities and the larger society; (4) To foster hope for the future of criminal justice and corrections that goes beyond temporary solutions through a balancing of victim, offender, and community rights, interests, and responsibilities. The objective of the one-year pilot study is to develop a seminar on restorative justice involving victims, offenders, and community members that can be replicated in correctional institutions and extended to community corrections contexts.

Results from the program have been published in a series of articles. The following are the manuscripts and peer reviewed articles reporting the program evaluation results published to date:   

Lovell, M.L., Helfgott, J.B., & Lawrence , C.F. (2002). Narrative accounts from the Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice program at the Washington State Reformatory. Contemporary Justice Review, 5, 261-272 .

Helfgott, J.B., Lovell, M.L., Lawrence , C.F. (2002). Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice: Accountability, healing, and hope through storytelling and dialogue. Crime Victims Report, 6, 3-4+.

Helfgott, J.B., Lovell, M.L., Lawrence , C.F., & Parsonage, W.H. (2000). Development of the Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice Program at the Washington State Reformatory. Criminal Justice Policy Review , 10 , 363-399.

Helfgott, J.B., Lovell, M.L., Lawrence , C.F., & Parsonage, W.H. (2000). Results from the pilot study of the Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice Program at the Washington State Reformatory. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice , 16 , 5-31.

Lovell, M.L., Helfgott, J.B., & Lawrence , C.F. (2002). Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice: Social group work bridging the divide. In Social Work with Groups by S. Henry, J. East, & C. Schmitz (Eds.) NY: Haworth Press.

Helfgott, J.B., Lovell, M.L., Lawrence , C.F. (2000). Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring: Final Project Report/Renewal Grant to the Center on Crime, Communities, & Culture of the Open Society Institute.

Helfgott, J.B., Lovell, M.L., Lawrence , C.F., & Parsonage, W.H. (1998). Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice: Final Project Report to the Center on Crime, Communities, & Culture of the Open Society Institute.

Recent Conference Presentations/Powerpoints on the CVORJ Program

2004 “Evaluation Results from ‘Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice': A Prison-based encounter program at the Washington State Reformatory. Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences , March 10, 2004 , Las Vegas , NV . Powerpoint Presentation. 

2003 “Restoring justice at the Washington State Reformatory: A prison-based encounter program.” 4th International Conference on Conferencing, Circles, and other Restorative Practices, Veldhoven , Netherlands , August 29, 2003 (with M. Lovell & C. Lawrence, & W.H. Parsonage). Powerpoint Presentation.  

Powerpoint Presentation with an overview of the program results in available upon request.