A Crash Course on Using Restorative Justice in Criminal Cases
3-Hour Webinar (Approved for IA CLE)
Enrollment limited to 10 participants
Webinars scheduled the second week of each month
through 2024
$149.00
What Is Restorative Justice?
“Restorative justice is an approach to achieving justice that involves to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense or harm to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations in order to heal and put things as right as possible.”
— Howard Zehr, “Grandfather of Restorative Justice”
Objectives:
To explain the "nuts & bolts" of how/why RJ works;
to motivate workshop participants to want to incorporate RJ practices into the criminal justice system of their communities; and
to provide directions on how participants can implement RJ in the counties where they live/work.
Restorative Justice (RJ) is presently being used by a small number of county prosecutors across the U.S. to:
achieve what stakeholders (i.e. crime victims, criminal defendants, police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys) all agree to be JUSTICE in suitable misdemeanor and felony cases,
reduce crippling caseloads/ease crowded court dockets,
resolve new criminal cases in weeks vs. months/years,
recognize and honor the personal agency of crime victims,
restore sustainable relationships between the community and its police,
provide opportunities for victim-offender reconciliation,
increase compliance with restitution plans/lower recidivism,
rebuild public confidence in the legal system, and
enhance job satisfaction for lawyers who practice criminal law and other professionals involved at all levels of the criminal justice system of their jurisdictions.
Workshop Agenda:
FIRST Hour: What RJ Can/Cannot Do
Case Studies*
Steps & Stages in the RJ process
Q & A
SECOND Hour: Why RJ Works
Dynamics
Case Studies*
Q & A
THIRD Hour: How to Implement RJ
Case Studies*
Reasons RJ Initiatives Fail
Q & A
*Cases: White police officer shoots Black shoplifter, assaults on officers with/without deadly weapon, defense attorney/crime victim, attempted murder, burglary, stalking, vehicular homicide, OWIs - causing serious injury/causing property damage/other, invasion of privacy, interference with official acts, resisting arrest, failure to disperse, criminal mischief, trespass, a theft in Amman, Jordan, neo-Nazi desecration of synagogue, etc.
For questions, please contact Gerald Partridge by email.
About your instructor
Gerald Partridge is a retired career prosecutor. He was introduced to Restorative Justice as a means for resolving sensitive/complex criminal cases by the Mennonite community during his second term as Washington County Attorney and continued to use RJ for the balance of his career as a prosecutor and to use RJ beyond retirement as a facilitator.
Partridge received instruction in victim-offender reconciliation and circle peacemaking from Federal Territorial Judge Barry Stuart (Yukon, Canada), Ora Schaub, J.D. (Community Justice for Youth, Chicago), Kay Pranis (formerly with Minnesota DOC), through course work at Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, VA) and through direct participation in circles with members of the Tlingit Tribe in the Yukon Territory. He has also trained/served as a mediator with the Iowa Mediation Service. He is a member of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice.
Partridge has lectured (on non-RJ subjects) at CLE programs in more than 40 states, served 6 years as an adjunct instructor at the National College of District Attorneys in Columbia, SC, and co-authored (with former NH Assistant Attorney General, John Stephen, and Western New England University Professor Emeritus, John Kwasnoski) three books on police science. In 1999, he founded Police Legal Sciences, Inc. which provides monthly training to public safety agencies in the U.S. and Canada. He currently serves as an RJ facilitator for Mediation Services of Eastern Iowa.
Thanks for visiting. We hope to see you in an upcoming workshop. Please direct questions to gnpartridge@yahoo.com.
Thank you to Mediation Services of Eastern Iowa for their support.
© 2023 One Giant Leap for Criminal Justice
