Fieldwork Project 1

Fieldwork Project:

Restorative Justice

Jay Scerbo

Seton Hill University

 Fieldwork Project 2

Summary

For my project I have made contact with a local officer. He got back to me and he has

said that they have some type of restorative justice program in the township. The program is

called Youth Commission which started back in 1997 and in the program the offenders have to

be 18 years or younger (Gerald Maloni, Personal Communication, Feb 20 2018). The program is

put into place for people who have committed very small crimes and it is to be in place of

possible judicial punishments. A lot of things a varied with the punishments, for example the

kids who are convicted of these crimes they are held under many restrictions and are required to

take part in some type of community service. The program is not specific as to what type of

community service they are doing. The program does have the kids held to a standard in school

and they are required to have a standard with attendance and grades. I am hoping to get into

contact with someone who has taken part in something like this program. From there I want to

just ask them a couple of questions as to how they liked and disliked the program. I want to then

go from there and possibly give some advice as to what could be improved into the program. I

am not going to ask many questions or a lot of questions either. Just some basic ones so that I

can get a grasp as to how the person liked or dislikes the program. Mainly though I want to get

across points as to why community service should be required rather than it being a choice to a

list of different options that an offender can take part in.

So for the program that I am researching and looking over I feel that there are things that

I can add and improve on. For the first part of improvement I noticed that in the document that

carried out all of the rules, it said, “Disposition of youthful offenders are not limited to but may

consist of or be combinations of any of the following.” (Youth, 5). With this statement the police
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department is talking about the requirements that the offender has to follow through on to carry

out with the program. Some of the requirements are probation, counseling, community service,

school attendance, curfew, and following laws. Now yes I agree entirely with all of these rules

and requirements. I just feel that the community service should be mandatory instead of basically

optional. Now realistically the officer who is assigned to the offender makes these decisions but I

feel that it should be said in the document. Community service does a lot for a person and not

only just the person who is doing it. Doing community service helps society in general, but

community service does a lot more for someone who is an offender than someone believes. Most

of the time people who commit crimes do not really understand the world or their surroundings I

feel. Doing community service makes someone feel more important than they might not feel.

Doing community service allows one to feel as if they made an impact on society (A). This is

important to rehabilitating a person. In an article I read it said, “"Purpose" has been identified as

a fundamental need of adolescence, and there are a growing number of community service

programs that may promote the development of a sense of purpose and meaning for youth

participants.” (Jones, abstract). The brain is said to not have been fully grown till around the age

of 21 so there for a person's purpose can be something that is neither developed so with help it

can develop earlier.

Community service can also teach the offenders a lesson on giving back. Ding

community service teaches the offenders lessons on basically taking accountability for their

actions. I visited the office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention website and found

one of their documents called “Giving Back”. This document contained reasons as to why doing

community service for Juvenile Offenders is great. On page 5 of the document they said,
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“community service can provide juvenile offenders with opportunities to “give back” to those

they have harmed, creating a restorative effect on the offenders, their victims, and the

community”. It is easy to put someone in a program where they must sit in therapy sessions,

attend school, maintain a curfew and do routine check ups on them. It is easy for someone to do

all that and not really learn any lessons. I feel that making them take responsibility in what they

have done is more important than just going through the motions. Doing the community service

teaches lessons on responsibility and what actions can lead to.

Another aspect to which I would like to improve this restorative justice program would

possibly be some type of mentoring program. I was thinking that maybe you can partner up each

of the offenders with an ex criminal of some sort, I would say nothing extreme. But I feel that it

would be something interesting to see because I feel that if a juvenile offender has the

opportunity to sit down and maybe have multiple conversations with someone who was possibly

in the same situation as them at one point in their life then it can change them and the route that

they are going down. It does not even have to be someone who was a criminal but I feel that it

would be beneficial for the juveniles to experience some time with someone who they might

have things in common with. This could show them that if they follow and obey the rules and

follow what they person had done their entire life then that could be their life. I have found a

document that has tips and methods about going with a mentor for a juvenile offender. There are

five tips as to how a mentor and their mentee can work and build a better relationship. This is

important when working with juvenile offenders because they can tend to be more difficult to

work with. There is something called the MOU or the Memorandum of Understanding which is

defined as, “MOU can foster effective communication between/among partners, increase access
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to a wide range of resources, strengthen existing and new partnerships and provide a framework

for addressing issues of mutual concern” (Miller). There are other parts to the program that help

create a strong bond between the mentor and mentee. Now I feel that implementing this practice

can be effective and can really help the offender.

To go about possibly getting these rules into practice, I am going to talk to the person I

have communication with. I am going to throw my ideas out there to him and see how he feels

about them. I feel that I am going to get my ideas across and I hope that he likes them. The only

issues I have are that I am not able to go and observe anyone because of my schedule with sports.

I wish that I was able to go and see an example of what I am trying to do. I have been apart of

mentoring programs throughout high school so I know how they work and I feel that they work

out great. I have never done any mentoring with a juvenile offender but I have done them with

elementary level students. I have also done a lot of community service events and I am not a

juvenile offender but I feel that if they can affect me in a positive way than they can do more

than that for someone like I said before, who is looking for a purpose.
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Annotated Bibliography

A. (2016, August 24). Why is Community Service Important? Retrieved February 27, 2018, from

https://www.fnu.edu/community-service-important/

- This website contains some information that talks about the advantages of doing community

service as a young kid and just doing community service in general. It talks about all of the

benefits from doing it and how much of a difference it can make in someone's life.

Degelman, C., Dogget, K., & Medina, G. (2006). ​Giving Back​ [PDF]. Chicago: Constitutional

Rights Foundation.

- This PDF contains a document created by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency

Prevention in which they talk about how community is very important to someone who has

done wrong such as they Juvenile Offenders. It teachers them lessons on consequences for

actions

JONES, J. N. (2017). The Development of Youth Purpose Through Community Service and

Social Action. ​American Secondary Education,​ ​45(​ 3), 50-67.

- This peer reviewed article contains information on another restorative justice program. The

program went over what community service can do mainly. It talked about how community

service is good for for kids because it explains how they need purpose and community

service gives that.

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Maloni, Gerald, (2018, February 20) Peters Township Police Department, Personal

Communication

- This is the person that I made contact with. He gave me information on a restorative justice

program that he has in place at his department in Peters Township in western Pa. He has

given me some info and has helped me with whatever I wanted.

Miller, J. M., Miller, H. V., Barnes, J., Clark, P. A., Jones, M. A., Quiros, R. J., & Peterson, S. B.

(2012, September). Referring Youth in Juvenile Justice Settings to Mentoring Programs. Retrieved

March 1, 2018, from ​http://www.mentoring.org/images/uploads/Journal%20Article.pdf

- This PDF contains mentoring program advice for juvenile offenders. This document

contains a lot of great information on methods and ways to go about building relationships

with the juveniles.

Peters Township Police Department. (n.d.). Retrieved February 26, 2018, from
http://www.peterstownship.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC=6A219C1C-6A7E-4C09-B43
B-9382C97A7584

- This is the police department of which the person I contacted belongs to. This site is a
township website and it is not specified towards the police department. I was not able to
find the core values of their department. I was able to find the goals as a department
though. “​Peters Township Police Department provides citizens with more than just crime
prevention. The Township Police Department takes an active role in our community by
providing services beyond criminal investigations.”, this is something that the department
talks about in what their department is about. Also when you get to the police department
tab, there you can find what the basic laws are, the citizens police academy, crime
prevention, the D.A.R.E program, and many other programs that the department has put
into place. You can also find the restorative justice program they have put into place there
as well. It is called Youth Commision.
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Simoes, F., & Alarcao, M. (2013, August 27). ​Teachers as School-Based Mentors for At-Risk

Students: A Qualitative Study​ [PDF]. New York: Springer Science Business Media .

- This peer reviewed article contains a study on mentoring with teachers and students. The

study was conducted in western countries and showed how the students and the teachers

interacted together. It talked about how they wanted to have the teachers and the students in

a better relationship rather than just be there for their education purposes.

Souza, K. A., & Dhami, M. K. (2008). A Study of Volunteers in Community-Based Restorative

Justice Programs. ​Canadian Journal Of Criminology & Criminal Justice,​ ​50(​ 1), 31-57.

doi:10.3138/cjccj.50.1.31

- This peer reviewed article contains information on studies with restorative justice. I used it

for other references to different programs to compare the one I have. This gave information

how restorative programs worked and if they are effective or not.

Thomas, D., & Hunninen, M. (2008, March). ​Making Things Right: Meaningful Community

Service for Juvenile Offenders​ [PDF]. National Center for Juvenile Justice.

- This document contains different ideas to different community service opportunities for

juvenile offenders. These community service opportunities have more meaning and that is

why i chose this document. If I were to implement community service I would suggest

some of the ones from this document.

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Youth Commission​ (pp. 1-5, Rep. No. 2503). (1997). Peters, PA: Peters Township Police

Department.

- This document contains the restorative justice program that I am going over and trying to

improve. It contains the regulations and what the requirements are. For example the

offender that is taking place in the program, needs to attend counseling, take part in

community service, attend school, and maintain a curfew.