Throwing Offenders a Curve

The questions came at Danny hard.

He was slumped into the couch, one fist jammed in his jacket pocket, head down, eyes dull, looking thin and scared and defiant.

The strangers were riding him, getting on his case. Asking why he got an F in biology and a D in English. Asking how he would feel if his little brother came home with that kind of no-account report card.

Asking, mostly, what they should tell the judge about him.

Danny snapped his gum. He shuffled his feet. He tried to slide by with “I dunno,” but they kept pushing him about that judge. What should we tell him, Danny? What are we supposed to tell him? Finally, Danny looked up and burst out: “Tell him what you want to tell him. Tell him the truth.”

That’s what they were after here. The truth about 14-year-old Danny and his 11-year-old brother, two kids who had stolen a bike. The boys had already admitted guilt. Their case could have been disposed of quickly in court. But a judge had referred Danny and his brother to a novel process taking root across Minnesota: the community circle.

In circle, ordinary people--receptionists, social workers, postal clerks, whoever--take it upon themselves to mete out justice. There’s none of the posturing that goes on in court. Just a bunch of folks sitting in a circle, discussing what needs to be done.

In circle, Danny and his brother can’t get away with a simple apology. Nor can they accept their punishment and be done with it. The circle probes for deeper truth. Are the boys running wild because of problems at home? Are they hanging out with the wrong group of friends? They say they regret the theft. They say, from now on, they’ll do good. But are they buckling down in school? Do they really understand why stealing is wrong?

The process is slow, frustratingly so; resolving Danny’s case takes months. Critics also contend it’s often too gentle. Although circle members could send Danny and his brother to juvenile hall, they choose instead a more reflective approach, “sentencing” the boys to better their grades and to apologize to their victim in writing. Week after week, they meet with the kids and their parents, trying to unravel what went wrong, and why.

“This is about the little people, the common folk, having some responsibility for making sure their community is safe and their neighbors are held accountable for what they do,” circle member William Moore said.

Circle Concept an Old One

Although community circles are new to our judicial system, the concept is an old one, rooted in Native American tradition. The idea is that crimes are not simply violations of abstract laws. They’re also affronts to the community. So it should be up to the community to hold the offender responsible--and to figure out a way to bring him back into the fold.

“This is back to the future,” said Mark Umbreit, director of the Center for Restorative Justice at the University of Minnesota. “As we go forward into the next century, we’re reclaiming the folk wisdom of the old ways.”

Circles do not act as juries, so they deal only with offenders who have pleaded guilty. Other than that, there are few rules.

Judges often participate, as do prosecutors, defense lawyers and probation officers. In circle, however, they all drop their titles--and their prestige. They go by first names, like everyone else. Their suggestions carry no extra weight.

Equality is key in circle. Consensus too. The victim is encouraged to join in, but as a community member, not an accusing witness. And when it comes time to hand out a sentence, which usually involves community service, everyone must agree with every condition--including the criminal, who is politely referred to as the “applicant” or, at worst, the “offender.”

Meetings open with spiritual meditations and close with everyone holding hands. Members pass around a “talking piece”--a feather, perhaps, or a polished stone--and only the person holding it is permitted to speak. There’s more than a shimmer of New Age gloss here, and a deliberate rejection of the adversarial system, although a judge does review the sentences. Nancy McCreight, who coordinates two circles in rural Minnesota, put it this way: “It’s not shame, blame and off you go.”

And that’s where critics find fault.

Even people who like the concept of letting a community deal with its own worry that circles coddle criminals. Others are uneasy with untrained citizens leading troubled offenders through a form of therapy. “There are a lot of dangers,” Moore, a trained family counselor, warned. “This process is very powerful because you open up personal stories. . . . In the wrong hands, you can see people being abused.”

Then there’s the question of whether circles really reflect the community. Meetings are always open; the circle consists of whoever shows up on any given night. Yet few citizens have the time or desire to counsel a crook week after week. Those who do tend to have a passion for rehabilitation that the rest of society--bent on three-strikes laws and ever-tougher prisons--doesn’t necessarily share.

“They rely too much on bolstering [the criminal’s] self-esteem, and they expect good deeds to flow from their acts of kindness,” said Roland Lund, a retired probation officer who participates in two small-town circles despite doubts about the process. “They’re nice people. But they don’t represent a cross-section of the community.”

The modern circle movement began a few years back, when Canadian jurist Barry Stuart began promoting the concept based on his experience in the Yukon. Offenders who completed circles there committed 82% fewer crimes, Stuart found. Convinced that circles are “the solution to tomorrow’s problems,” he set to work training corrections officials and citizens to run them.

To be sure, even Stuart does not think circles can take on all the duties of courts. Lawyers and juries are needed when a suspect says he’s innocent. And circles are not appropriate, Stuart says, for criminals who present “a real danger to the community”--although he does think they can handle aggressors, including some sexual offenders.

While circles are used extensively in the Yukon, advocates in the United States know of only two communities outside Minnesota to test the concept: Franklin County, in western Massachusetts, and Austin, Texas. So there’s simply not enough data to evaluate whether circles reduce recidivism.

But the lack of statistics hasn’t stopped circles from winning converts, especially here, in this state with a proud progressive tradition.

The Minnesota legal system sponsors at least a half-dozen circles to sentence criminals. The concept has also been adapted to other roles: School counselors now convene student circles to deal with playground disputes. And some communities hold “healing circles,” where crime victims can talk through their traumas with neighbors--or even confront the perpetrators who harmed them. “I walked across the room and took his hands . . . and it was like something melted,” said Kathy Burns, who used a healing circle to talk with a man who invaded her home. “I didn’t feel the hostility anymore.”

The flexible nature of circles appeals to District Judge Steven Ruble, who oversees justice in 10 Minnesota counties. He often refers criminals to be sentenced in circle, and he knows just who will benefit too: the ones he feels most like throttling.

“There are certain individuals who come [to court] again and again, and you just want to grab them by the napes of their necks, shake them and say, ‘Why can’t you get your act together?’ ” Ruble said. “These aren’t hard-core predators. They’re people who are their own worst enemies. . . . They cannot seem to figure out how to exist in society without trampling on the rights of the community.”

They’re people, in short, like Randy Lovering.

‘Looked Like an Easy Way Out of Jail’

An amiable 23-year-old father of three with long blond hair and a tidy goatee, Lovering was kicked out of high school as a sophomore and spent the next five years “jumping from party to party,” he said. He’d take drugs, drink and get into trouble. Then he’d do it all again.

Lovering was nabbed on so many charges that he no longer remembers how many months he slept behind bars. Finally, last fall, a judge referred him to circle. He agreed, he said, because “it looked like an easy way out of jail.”

In one sense, the circle was easier.

During the years he had bounced in and out of jail, Lovering always felt “the system” was yanking him down, busting him for each little mistake. The circle, in contrast, cut him breaks.

He couldn’t go to Alcoholics Anonymous every single week. Fine, circle members said. Go three times a month. He couldn’t afford to pay his fines all at once. OK, the circle said. Pay what you can, when you can. Circle members ferried him around so he wouldn’t be tempted to drive without a license. They even counseled him through the toughest decision he’d ever made: to drop his old gang of friends. “Instead of pushing me down, they’d help me,” Lovering said.

That approach took eight months, but it seems to have worked.

Lovering hasn’t had a drink since August and has stayed out of jail for more than a year. His probation officer, Beth Soderman, calls his transformation “amazing.”

And he no longer views circle as the easy way out. “Instead of sitting [in jail] waiting for my meals and watching TV, I had to go out and work on myself. I had to figure out why I’m screwing up and do something about it.”

Lovering, of course, had plenty of help. That’s typical of the process. Circle members work hard to mentor offenders, whether by writing their resumes or putting them up in a spare bedroom to help them break away from bad influences at home.

“They wrap their arms around this person and just hang on,” said Kay Pranis, who coordinates Minnesota’s circles from the Department of Corrections. “These communities don’t give up.”

Indeed, critics complain that circles tend to be too generous. In theory, they can send an offender back to court, or on to jail, if he fails to comply with circle demands. In practice, many circles tolerate slip-up after slip-up and let offenders wiggle out of obligations by revising any sentence that proves onerous.

“I look at it as enabling,” Lund said.

Because circles emphasize trust, members may not understand that “a lot of the [criminals] who go through the system are very good con artists,” agreed Jennifer Fahey, chief prosecutor for Mille Lacs County. “My primary concern is the victim’s safety and security. I don’t know that I want to entrust that to lay people.”

Circle advocates answer such skepticism with an oft-repeated refrain: The current system is broken. Jails don’t scare criminals straight. Judges can’t stop bad guys from doing bad things again and again.

So why not give trust--and the kindest impulses of ordinary citizens--a try?

“Yes, some community members are naive,” Soderman said. “But that could be a good thing, because they come in with a different perspective.”

By deferring always to professionals, “we’ve robbed the [judicial] process of the wisdom and insight of the community,” Ruble added. “There’s an awful lot of wisdom to be gained just from getting up at 6 in the morning and making it through the day until you get into bed.”

Circles draw on that wisdom to craft unconventional sentences, meant to be more instructive than punitive. They may order an animal abuser to build 100 birdhouses, or demand that a vandal keep a local park clean, or insist that a truant check in with a neighbor every day after school.

To discipline Melissa, a 14-year-old who had run away repeatedly from her home in rural Minnesota, the circle sentenced her to write down five good things about each day. Shyly at first, but with a growing grin, Melissa read from her list at a recent circle meeting. She had played floor hockey in gym. Her parents had taken her out for ice cream. She and a friend had flown kites.

Listening to the list, circle members beamed. So did Melissa’s parents.

In court, they said later, they had encountered only harried lawyers and intimidating judges. In circle, they found a dozen neighbors they’d never before met who are pulling for Melissa to reform--and, most important, who genuinely believe she can do it.

“I feel good about coming here,” Melissa said.

“It’s just amazing,” her father added, “that there would be people who care, who want to help our family.”

Back in Minneapolis, Danny’s father was saying much the same thing. Circle members--all strangers to him--had been poking into his boys’ lives for nearly two hours, and he appreciated it. “I don’t think it’s nosy. I think it’s good.”

Even Danny had to agree, once he was released from the hot seat.

Between hugs from circle members wishing him well, Danny said shyly that deep down, maybe he did welcome their help.

“They’re nice,” he said. “I’m learning something.”