There’s a point — somewhere between the time punches are thrown during school hours and students find themselves in a courtroom — where Clare Nelson hopes she can make a difference, a calm voice in the middle of turmoil.
Her role is professional mediator and she’s coordinator of a program in Lancaster County called Project Restore, which uses mediation — also called victim offender conferencing — to help students avoid charges of assault or disturbing the peace for incidents that happen in school.
The goal: to keep young people out of the juvenile court system.
“We walk through why they made the choice and what would be a better choice, rather than just punishing them,†Nelson said.
Project Restore is a collaborative project with Lincoln Public Schools, the Lancaster County Attorney’s Office, the Lincoln Police Department and the Lancaster County Department of Human Services.
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It is part of a larger statewide pilot program with two other mediation centers, in Omaha and Scottsbluff, which includes students already on pretrial diversion or probation for incidents — including theft and burglary — that happen either inside or outside of school.
Because of the success of the program — 93 percent of the cases completed resulted in agreements by the young offenders to make amends to their victims — state court officials hope to take the broader program statewide.
“We want to keep kids out of the prison pipeline,†said Debora Denny, director of the Nebraska Office of Dispute Resolution in the Nebraska State Court Administrator’s Office.
They hope to do that through mediation — a process to help students understand the harm they’ve caused, while giving them a chance to tell their side of the story.
It brings them together with their victims, or those who have been the victim of a similar offense who can talk about how it affected them.
“Restorative justice is about coming to the table to tell your story, to tell what happened,†Nelson said.
Often, in assaults or disturbances in school, the offender feels wronged and can share that information, as can the victim — or someone acting in the victim’s place.
Mediators can help young people understand how their actions harmed not just the victim but others or the community as a whole.
“We talk about what happened when they made that choice — who was affected and how were they affected,†Nelson said. “And what could have been a different choice.â€
In the case of an assault at school, for instance, an administrator could explain how school leaders had to take time from helping other students to deal with the assault, Nelson said.
Offenders are expected to come up with a plan to make reparations — an apology letter or restitution, for instance — and leave with tools to avoid making the same choice when they find themselves in similar situations.
Casey Karges, executive director of the Mediation Center in Lincoln, said a key to mediation is letting offenders take ownership.
“We don’t push an apology. They’re making decisions on what the repair will be,†he said. “We believe if people have input in the decision in some way there’s a better chance they’ll carry through.â€
State officials say it’s working — especially the efforts in Lancaster County.
Lincoln's mediation center handled more than two-thirds of the 70 cases in the pilot program, according to an evaluation by the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota.Â
Lancaster County has done mediation with juvenile offenders for several years, said Sara Hoyle, Lancaster County Human Services administrator.
It started four or five years ago when church leaders asked county officials if they could meet with young people arrested in a series of church vandalisms, Hoyle said.
In cases such as that, where young people are already on probation or pretrial diversion, the goal is to keep them from getting arrested or charged again.
Project Restore works with students before they land in juvenile court, and because of its success — as well as similar projects in other states — Denny said she would like to see other counties reach out to schools.Â
Project Restore began independently in Lancaster County about the same time as the statewide pilot, proposed by a committee looking for ways to reduce racial disparities in the justice system.
In 2010, 33 percent of all juvenile arrests were minorities, while they accounted for just 17 percent of the population, according to statistics used in the pitch for the project.
Because a third of the arrests stemmed from incidents at school, that's where officials focused their efforts.
First-time offenders ages 12 to 15 are eligible for mediation as long as the incidents don't involve sexual assault, serious injury or gangs.
It's too early to gauge whether the process will keep students from getting in trouble again, but officials are hopeful.
One of the biggest advantages of Project Restore is that it addresses the problem quickly — mediators often contact offenders within a day of the offense, Hoyle said.
Mediation gives students a way to move past a mistake, Nelson said.
“I’ll often say to a kid, 'You don’t want this to define you,’†she said. “This one choice does not need to define you. So let’s move forward.â€