By James Bowler

P.A. groups gather to talk alternative measures in corrections

Nov 18, 2014 | 6:26 AM

In a community housing three correctional facilities, members of the justice system came together to speak about alternatives to incarceration. 

The Restorative Justice Conference was hosted by the Prince Albert Urban Alternative Measures program at the Art Hauser Centre on Monday.

Restorative justice is an alternative to traditional sentencing. Instead of using incarceration and other forms of punishment, offenders can make amends to society through community work projects.

Those who have worked in the justice field and especially in the Urban Alternative Measures program believe the idea of restorative justice does work to bring closure to the victim and help many offenders start new lives.

“It’s not a soft-on-crime sort of initiative, this is an appropriate way to handle something outside of the normal process,” said Prince Albert Police Chief Troy Cooper. “To be quite frank, often our justice system is cumbersome and time consuming, and sometimes it doesn’t have the impact we’re hoping to have on the offender.”

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Cooper spoke at the conference, reflecting on his own personal observations of the use of alternative measures in the justice system.

“At first we were quite surprised, it was a new concept in the early 90s, but of course it’s a responsible way to handle a lot of the cases that we felt bad putting through the system,” he said. “Quite often an officer can tell when he’s attending a call, that this is an incident that should be handled in a way outside of the normal court processes, where somebody deserves an opportunity to tell the victim that they feel sorry, to make reparations back to the community.”

Working in the system, Robyn Ermine with the Prince Albert Urban Alternative Measures program said the proof is in the numbers.

“Once you see the success rates coming out of our office, you see the different things just on a daily basis with the appreciative victims, the children that are involved and the different programs that we offer, I do think it works,” she said.

“I’ve had different instances where people have made complete changes in their life because of some of the programs that are offered in this city, and that proves success in itself.”

And taking a fresh perspective coming into the program, two First Nations University students in the social work program said they feel restorative justice has been proven to work.

“I took a Justice Studies 100 class and after reading through all the types of justice, we got on restorative justice and it just seemed to make sense,” said Allyssa Sanderson, a second-year social work student.

“It seemed like instead of putting criminals away this is more therapeutic approach to justice, with high success rates.”

Danée Burnie, another second-year social work student, said it provides the offender an opportunity to accept responsibility.

“I’ve been a youth care worker for six years too, and kind of the perspective is teaching accountability as well, and it’s accountability for the person that commits that crime but it also involves the victims too and allowing them to forgive. If the offender is someone who is admitting remorse, admitting they were wrong taking accountability, responsibility for that, that’s a big role too on how I kind of judge the situation.”

Sanderson added that it’s important to remember that these people are still people and not animals meant to be locked up.

“Locking them up is kind of how you treat animals, you lock them up if they’re bad, you put them away stick them in a kennel and get rid of them, take them out of society. There’s not a lot of reintegration programs and even with halfway houses nobody wants them in their communities, nobody thinks that maybe this person is trying to make themselves better.

“Everybody needs to be part of the solution in order for this to actually work.”

There are people who go through the alternative measures program and don’t follow through with the intended expectations to take responsibility for their crimes.

“That has to be, I think where the other agencies pick up,” said Ermine.

“Some people don’t complete certain things, it could be their home, their lifestyle, their addictions; there’s different issues that lead to them being unsuccessful to the program or landing in one of the correctional facilities. There’s different agencies that can take care of that aspect, Prince Albert really has a holistic to restorative justice.”

Ermine added that working together, all of these agencies interweave to offer the support not only to the offenders, but to each other as well.

Cooper said in the end, there are instances where correctional facilities are necessary, but there are also instances where a different approach can be helpful.

“Sometimes court and jail is appropriate, absolutely, but sometimes restitution, sometimes apologies, sometimes those are the appropriate responses.”

jbowler@panow.com

On Twitter: @journalistjim