by Chris Dinnan
Special Issue:
A Facilitator’s Reflections
on Restorative Justice
Conferencing in Vermont
I have worked for the Vermont Department of Corrections for over twenty-five
years now, starting as a Volunteer Services Coordinator at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility, then becoming
a Community Resources Coordinator for
both that facility and for the Rutland, Addison, and Bennington county probation
and parole offices, and now serving as a
Community Corrections Program Supervisor at Rutland probation and parole. Over
that time, I have been privileged to both
observe and participate in the blossoming
of restorative justice practices in Vermont.
In total, I have facilitated/coordinated well
over fifty such applications in cases ranging
from broken windows to broken lives. My
focus below will be on the broken lives end
of that spectrum and how restorative practices have impacted and, in the future, may
impact more sentencing outcomes.
By way of background, my involvement
in the restorative justice movement in Vermont has not been limited to the VT DOC,
as I have also been able to coordinate/facilitate such practices further “upstream”
in community justice centers, court diversion programs, the Department for Children and Families, and in middle and high
schools. Within the VT DOC, these processes have been applied pre-charge through
the state’s attorney’s office, pre-sentence
as part of the pre-sentence investigation,
post-sentence as a condition of probation,
pre-release from incarceration, and once,
for instance, as part of a governor’s pardon
investigation over twenty years after the
criminal incident occurred.
My first real exposure to restorative justice was a two-day training I attended
about twenty years ago offered through VT
DOC by the RealJustice organization, now
the International Institute for Restorative
Practices, out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
This training prepared practitioners to facilitate “family group conferences.” In fact,
this was the first of many such trainings offered over the years in Vermont through VT
DOC that have prepared hundreds of individuals to provide this service. Unfortunately, the systems were not in place at the
time to take full advantage of this resource.
Now, those systems have changed and apwww.vtbar.org
pear poised for transformation.
Almost simultaneously, in 1995, under
the leadership of then-VT DOC Commissioner John Gorczyk, the reparative probation program, firmly grounded in principles
of restorative justice, was launched as an
alternative to traditional probation in Vermont. This program has been very effective
in dealing with minor, non-violent offenses
by engaging the offender (and victim(s) if
they choose) with a panel of trained community volunteers in a process to address
the incident, to reflect on who was affected
and how, and to determine what is needed
to occur as a result. While originally nonviolent offenders were the sole target population for the reparative probation program, this too appears to be changing as
restorative justice implementation moves
forward in Vermont.
I will discuss below three cases in which
the crime happened to be one of severe
violence, two with death resulting, and
how along the criminal justice continuum
the convening of a restorative justice process affected the outcome of the cases.
Anywhere along that continuum, there is
almost always a relationship between the
plea-bargaining process and the sentencing outcome, as the vast majority of cases
do not end with a jury determining guilt or
innocence. Sentencing is almost always determined by an admission of guilt and an
agreement as to consequences.
It is universally agreed among practitioners that restorative justice at its core
needs to be victim-focused and offendersensitive. With this in mind, it has always
felt particularly compelling to me that the
more severe the offense, the more consideration should be taken to offer victims and
offenders a means by which to address the
classic restorative justice questions: What
happened? Who was affected and how?
What needs to occur now so that, to the extent possible, the harm can be addressed?
In fact, at least historically, it has been the
less severe offenses that have gotten more
attention regarding employing restorative
justice processes.
One of the roles of the VT DOC in the
criminal justice system is to perform presentence investigations, which include senTHE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SUMMER 2014
tencing recommendations, for the court.
Typically, an admission of guilt has been
made, and there is a plea agreement in
place. It is notable in the following case
that no admission of guilt had been initially made prior to the ordering of a preplea investigation by the court. In this case,
a young woman had been charged with
Grossly Negligent Operation with Death
Resulting, a felony that could result in imprisonment for up to fifteen years and a
fine of up to $15,000. At the initial arraignment, she pled not guilty on the advice of
her counsel. Also on the advice of counsel,
she had not contacted the family of the deceased victim in spite of the fact that she
had strongly wanted to do so.
A total of five status conferences were
held over a substantial period of time before it became clear that the state and
the defense were nowhere near reaching a plea agreement. The parties agreed
to, and Judge Theresa DiMauro orde ɕ