The North Shore Restorative Justice Society
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Mission Statement
To build capacity and connectivity with the North Shore community to prevent and respond to conflict and harm. We will do this through values-based processes that engage elders, adults and youth.
About This Cause
The North Shore Restorative Justice Society (NSRJS) is a community-based, non-profit organization that has been addressing crime and conflict on the North Shore for over 23 years. We liaise with various stakeholders including the North Vancouver RCMP and West Vancouver Police, victim services, school districts and youth serving agencies to provide restorative and preventative responses to conflict in our community. By redirecting active police files (including youth and adult cases) through the Restorative Response program from the court system, we engage all affected parties with alternative conflict resolution techniques. At the core, these techniques generally include an open discussion of the event(s); an examination into the probable root causes of the affected behaviour; and active solutions, which focus on reparation, reconciliation and prevention. The North Shore Restorative Justice Society has been facilitating this type of restorative programing since the organizations’ inception and we have expanded our services over the years by receiving neighborhood dispute files and community referral cases. These types of cases have allowed our organization to broaden the scope of our work and support a larger network of residents on the North Shore. Currently we receive between 80-90 referrals each year. In addition to our restorative programming, NSRJS also delivers the Restorative Justice in Education (RJE) Initiative, we have worked with hundreds of children and youth to develop emotional awareness, communication, and conflict resolution skills. In our school Circles, we focus on the relationships between peers as well as with school staff, therefore strengthening our community fabric. In the summer of 2020, we launched our first ever cohort program centering high school age students who might have been feeling aimless or isolated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Youth Justice Lab was established in partnership with SFU’s Centre for Restorative Justice and over the summer of 2020, we invited 15 youth to participate. We held weekly sessions with staff and guest speakers exploring topics such as restorative and transformative justice, decolonization, racial struggles, intergenerational activism, and more. In groups, participants developed projects to tackle justice issues with the guidance of local mentors. At the program graduation, groups presented their ideas to the community. Project topics included from poverty and income inequality, curriculum changes to decolonize BC public education, and peer mental health support networks. We also provide Community Dialogues and Youth Speak Out events to bring together diverse community members to engage in various justice focused discussions.