This section is for people who attended the Restorative Justice Symposium in Regina in November of 2010, who would like to ask questions or leave comments about the “Victims and Values” intervention.  Go ahead, just ask away!

Ian McKenzie

Hi Ian…Great symposium.  I was most interested in your project approach and results, and agree that it is worthwhile promoting the project to establish a long term program.  I would be very interested in getting a copy of your slide presentation to refer back to.  I would also be interested in any general background data you would be comfortable sharing.  Please keep in mind that my interest is more grassroots.  I am always looking for ways to help my justice committee members to understand and work with offenders in diversions and reintegration efforts.  Again, thanks for a very interesting presentation.

Dang!

Sorry, I forgot to bring the file with me.  I intended to send it to you here yesterday but forgot then too!  I’ll send it along in the next day or two.

My real hope for the program is that an agency (e.g., provincial or federal corrections) will want to try it and will help me produce the necessary lesson plans and such.

Ian

Hi Ian…good to know what your goal is…I can do two things based on knowing that.  One, I can do some asking around within my justice circles to see if there is interest in pursuing this type of program within the Whitehorse Correction Center (Territorial Inst.).  Two, in Yukon we have a Northern Institute for Social Justice based at Yukon College.  It was newly established in the last two years, and is developing programming and deliverying courses related to justice.  They estimate that there currently are over 3,000 jobs in Yukon that have a justice component, and our population is only around 35,000.  I have spoken to them in the past about developing programming for offenders, and I believe they may be very interested in this.  Would you like a contact name within the NISJ?

That sounds awesome!  I’d like that very much!

The Correctional Service of Canada, the outfit I work for, is beginning to show some interest in this kind of program too.  I originally wrote the program back around 1995, but there wasn’t much interest in this topic at CSC at the time.  This is why I have >10 years’s worth of recidivism data!
:o)

I rewrote the program to maximize the impact it has on antisocial associates and attitudes.  I’ve made it clear to my employer that I am the owner of this program since I wrote it on my own time and I can therefore could give it away to another agency if I wished (i.e., if CSC weren’t going to do something with it).  Happily, agencies are starting to pay attention to the RJ world and they are doing more investigating into this sort of thing.  I’m hoping that CSC will make use of it, but nothing concrete has materialized.

I love running the program and I know that it works.  It really IS rewarding and absolutely fascinating to do.  My problem though, is that I really have no time or talent for putting it together in a package so that someone else has exactly what they need to do it themselves.  The program itself isn’t very tough to run at all.  I would be absolutely thrilled if a Canadian agency were prepared to help me package it up.  I think any high school teacher would likely be perfect for the task and we could hammer it out in a very short time frame.

If your agency were interested in doing this (helping to package it up for others), I’d be thrilled to pieces to help them get it up and running to suit whatever clientele they had in mind.  In case it needs to be said, the program would cost only the price of putting the package together with me (and printing whatever your agency needed of course), and whatever training activities are necessary to get some facilitators ready for action.  I can’t see this being very expensive, nor can I see it taking much time to do.

I really appreciate your interest in this program.  I’m very excited about it and would love to see it being used.

Ian

OK - sorry about the delay.  Here’s the attachment.

Ian

Thanks for the presentation Ian.  More good news.  I just met with the National Crime Prevention Center rep here in Whitehorse, and she was VERY interested in your work.  I promised I would share the presentation with her.  Sounds like she may be able to talk it up with Ottawa too!  I’ll send you some names and contact numbers for people in Yukon.

The work speaks for itself, isn’t it great?

Wow!  That IS awesome news!

CSC is doing a literature review at the moment.  This worries me a little because sometimes we study something to death and as time wears on, the interest often diminishes, relegating the report to a shelf somewhere.

The cost of packaging the whole thing up into a portable and useable kit would be very, very inexpensive.  If a province stepped up and said they wanted to do it, I would certainly cooperate.  It would be a much simpler matter to deal with just one agency.

If anyone up there wants a complete presentation, I’m ready any time.  There is probably a way to do it online, so it needn’t cost much (I’ve even thought about doing it on youtube!).

Ian

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