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Program Substitutes Mediation for Incarceration

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Times Staff Writer

One woman told the rabbi that Deuteronomy reminded her of the TV show “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

She and a score of others gathered recently at the West Side Jewish Community Center to study religious texts as part of a mediation-training session that teaches them to resolve conflicts between repeat juvenile offenders and their victims.

The group used a biblical story from Deuteronomy about a dead man discovered in a valley and the sacrifice of a heifer that atones for his death to discuss t’shuvah, the Hebrew word for “turning.”

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In this context, the word is defined as the “notion that all human beings are capable of turning away from wrongdoing and turning back toward doing the right thing,” said Daniel Sokatch, executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

The alliance, in conjunction with the Los Angeles-based addiction recovery center Beit T’Shuvah, oversees the mediations through the Jewish Community Justice Project. About 30 volunteers have handled 200 cases since mediations began in December 2002. A second group of volunteers finished its 40 hours of training this spring.

Although the project is administered through the alliance and based on t’shuvah, neither mediators nor participants must be Jewish. Sokatch explained: Jews have “an obligation to repair the larger community for everyone in it.”

“In L.A., you get in your car and you go to work and you drive back home and you go to the beach and you never have to see [violence] if you don’t want to,” Sokatch said. But because violence exists, “we thought there’s got to be something we can do that would be constructive.”

The project grew out of the alliance’s criminal justice working group, which was thinking the same thing.

The project’s focus drew Jennifer Karno, 37, who said she was looking for a way to better connect with her community. Through the concept of t’shuvah, the mediations become “a preventive measure where [teenage offenders] actually have to realize the ramifications of their actions” rather than just going through Juvenile Court, being reprimanded and ending up back on the streets, the Santa Monica resident and video producer said.

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It was the hands-on aspect of the program that appealed to Jordan Susman, 37, who was trained in the first group of mediators.

“I think the criminal justice system is messed up -- broken almost,” said Susman, a law student at Loyola Marymount University. But instead of just complaining about these problems, Susman saw the program as a way to try to fix things.

“What is your alternative?” he asked. “Slapping fines on these kids that they are never going to pay? Putting them in the system?”

The mediators oversee a meeting -- usually held at or near the scene of the wrongdoing -- between the offender and his victim, Susman said. Before offenders enter the room, they must have admitted guilt for their actions.

“I always start off by saying, ‘If you are innocent, you should not be here,’ ” Susman said. “You should be in court.”

Each person gets a chance to tell his side of the story, Susman said, then negotiations for restitution begin. Victims are usually more concerned with how the youths are faring in school, Susman said, and they ask for letters of apology, community service and, on rare occasions, money.

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“You don’t really know what the victim is going to want,” Susman said. “They usually say [to the offender], ‘How are your grades?’ ”

In one case, Susman said, a shoplifter was asked to tell her peers of her experience in hopes of deterring others. She wrote about her arrest and the embarrassment the incident caused her in an anonymous article to her school newspaper, he said.

According to mediator Joan Walston, 63, who has handled about two dozen cases, the restitution agreement is the crux of the mediation.

The retired businesswoman, who is studying to become a professional mediator, said the agreement is a good one if it addresses the wrong done in the community.

The child shouldn’t be “walking out a winner,” she said, citing one incident in which she thought a teenager who had been caught smoking marijuana in a park got off lightly by having to volunteer as a soccer coach.

“You don’t want them to feel they’ve actually trumped the system,” she said.

Both Walston and Susman said for all the good the mediations do, they often think they haven’t done enough. They said they would prefer to monitor the progress of those they help, something the program doesn’t do yet.

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Sokatch said the alliance was working to fix that flaw, as well as to expand the project into mediations outside the juvenile offender sphere.

The project has helped keep at least one teenager, Dyangle Turner, out of that system.

A stolen checkbook found by mall police when they stopped Turner in December for shoplifting nearly cost him some time in juvenile hall.

“It would have scared me if I was about to be in there for a few years or something,” said Turner, now 18. Through mediation, he agreed to write a letter of apology to the victim and to perform community service. After finishing high school, he hopes to go to college.

“As of now, I am doing pretty good,” Turner said. “I am doing better than what I was doing.”

Restorative justice programs such as the community justice project are a “big key to rehabilitation,” said Judge Charles Q. Clay III, who handles 20 to 30 Juvenile Court cases a day in Compton.

“I am a big fan of that kind of program because I think it’s important that especially young people are made aware of the impact their crimes have on other people, their victims and their community,” he said.

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Often, Clay added, juvenile offenders “don’t look very far outside their little box.”

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