AURORA | Aurora City Council members on Monday unanimously signed off on a $100,000 proposal to design a so-called restorative justice program for certain criminal offenders in the city.
The proposed resolution seeks to hire a consultant to design a local restorative justice formula, a method of reprisal that typically pairs referred criminal defendants and their victims with facilitators who create contracts designed to repair perceived harm to society.
At their regular study session May 17, members heard from various officials in Longmont, where police, school and court workers have run a similar program for nearly two decades. The Longmont Criminal Justice Partnership works with offenders as young as 10 charged with petty, misdemeanor and felony offenses, though no domestic or sexually violent suspects are involved.
The group creates 90-day contracts for most defendants and boasts that north of 80% of people complete their agreements as stipulated. Just 3.5% of some 2,500 people who went through the program between 2006 and 2019 re-offended within Longmont municipal boundaries after completing their agreements, according to data presented to council members.
The majority of cases in Longmont are juvenile offenders charged with misdemeanor theft, data show. The Longmont program currently handles roughly 110 cases per year.
In Longmont, defendants are referred to volunteer restorative justice facilitators from local police, school officials, prosecutorial diversion programs and probation officers.
“Ultimately in court, you never have to admit guilt, as a matter of fact you never have to say anything in court — you hire a (lawyer) that does all your talking for you,” Longmont School Resource Officer Jason Malterud said in a video testimonial. “You never have to admit that you did anything wrong. And then you just have to do whatever punishment is handed down by an adult … where in restorative justice you have to take responsibility. Not community service, pay a fine, go to probation and keep one person happy. You have to fix it with the community, and then once you finally have it fixed with the community, then you can be accepted back in.”
Aurora Councilperson Curtis Gardner, who sponsored the recent resolution, commended all of his colleagues for moving the proposal forward.
“I am really encouraged to see this move forward. Restorative justice can be truly transformative as it brings together the victim, the offender and the community to chart a path forward to repair the harm caused by a criminal act,” Gardner said. “Rather than entering the system to become another statistic, an offender has an opportunity for change while the victim is made whole. To have unanimous support from my colleagues shows restorative justice is good policy so this is a positive step for our city.”
Council members first earmarked funding for the Aurora program’s design at a recent spring budget workshop.
Lawmakers will still have to formally pass the resolution establishing the request at a meeting in the coming weeks.
Sounds like it’s worth a try
First hand I feel the city is going about it in the wrong way. Recently things have been leveling out in all fairness.