From Harford County government:
The Harford County Community Mediation Program (HCCMP) has initiated a new restorative justice program for youth in Harford County through a partnership between the nonprofit Community Conferencing Center and the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services. The program will offer community conferencing as an effective alternative for young people involved in crime and other harmful behavior. HCCMP is seeking volunteer facilitators to guide participants through the process; training will be provided.
Community conferencing empowers the community of people affected by an incident, including victims, offenders, and supporters, to collectively decide how to best repair the harm and prevent future occurrences. Because all stakeholders are included in decision-making, compliance averages 95% and the recidivism rate for youth offenders is 60% lower than in the juvenile justice system statewide, according to the Community Conferencing Center.
Volunteer facilitators must be over 18 and should be:
· passionate about providing young people with opportunities to thrive;
· able to let people make decisions for themselves without a need to “fix the problem”;
· comfortable with people expressing strong feelings.
Applications are now being accepted for a two-day training on Thursday, November 30 and Friday, December 1 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at a Harford County location to be determined. The training will be co-facilitated by Community Conferencing Center’s Executive Director Lauren Abramson. It will combine instruction and experiential learning and emphasize both the principles underlying the process and techniques of community conferencing facilitation. Trained volunteers will then be paired with an experienced facilitator for a period of apprenticeship before taking on cases of their own. Applications for the training are due by Monday, November 20, and are available online at http://bit.ly/2ijGaCA.
The Harford County Community Mediation Program is a part of the Harford County Department of Community Services and offers mediation and facilitation services at no charge to the citizens of Harford County.
Mediation is a cost-effective and proven method of resolving conflict. Under the administration of County Executive Barry Glassman, mediation services through HCCMP have expanded significantly. In the last 36 months, HCCMP has added re-entry services, which reconnect inmates to their families and employment, and mediation and planning services within families. More recently, HCCMP has paired trained peer recovery coaches with individuals in recovery and used the mediation model to establish protocols, long-term treatment, and sobriety maintenance strategies that reduce relapse. This fall HCCMP and Harford County Public Schools will offer attendance/truancy mediations and conflict resolution programing.
To learn more about available programs and initiatives, call 410-638-4807 or visit http://www.harfordcountymd.gov/523/Mediation-Program.
Great, you see how this worked out with the school system. There are no consequences for anything anymore, and everybody gets away with everything, and mysteriously the referral to the office rate declined. Why do you thing the drug problem is so bad, because there are no consequences. The outsiders think, oh those poor kids, wake up these are criminals in the making, and now they are going to get away with even more with this system. Where did the money come from for this new flavor of the week company? Just let the police do there job, build more prisons, and things will change for the better. It worked for how many hundreds of years before the liberals took over.
This in fact, is untrue. And, there are many other issues besides drug use, selling drugs. The school system has tried zero tolerance which often leads to expulsion. That is not the answer. Building prisons in this country has been the go to for many many years and is not the entire solution either. Without any intervention, people return to their behaviors mostly. I suggest you read about these restorative practices and mediation. And, I don’t believe this is a company. Prisons have once again benn turned over to corporations, commercial enterprises and the result has been devastating! Won’t work fir school systems either. Try reading on this subject it’s a complex dilemma. You will learn something. And, btw, there are consequences from opioid use; it Will eventually kill you.
The school system should allow criminals to sell drugs on school grounds. Expulsion will only lead these students straight into jail.
Let’s not look at where these drugs came from… Big Pharma. Or how drug use increased after soldiers came home from Viet Nam. And let’s not invest a small amount of money to avoid spending $90,000 a year to house a prisoner. Or programs that could alleviate bigger problems in the future.