The Restorative Justice hui held on June 16 was aimed to raise more awareness of the process to the community and stakeholders. Mike Hinton from Ngā Whare Waatea Marae in Manukau, spoke about the process and how it is simply a discussion between offender and victim. This is a process for healing and moving forward for offenders, victims and Whanau of both parties. Mike also talked about his experience and various roles within RJ and how he has moved up the ranks. Mike showed a clip of the whole RJ process from beginning to end, this documentary was filmed by Maori television and is a powerful insight to the process that involves Restorative Justice, this can be accessed on the Maori television website, You can view the documentary here
Anna Hawkes who is the Service Manager from Gore corrections spoke about the new community RJ panel that we are currently working on. This new programme is aimed at recidivist drink drivers in the Gore community, therefore offenders that have been charged 2 or more times with drink driving will be referred to RJ and put in front of a community panel which will consist of members from the local Police, St Johns, Fire service as well as a previous offender that has been clean from drinking for the last 5 years and hopefully a victim of drink driving. Anna seen a high percentage of drink driving in the Gore community and heard of a similar programme run in the West Coast by RJ and local probation and approached Karen and Natasha and it went from there. This community panel process is also voluntary for offenders and gives the offender an insight to the impact on a community level.
Nga Kete are currently looking to recruit some volunteers to support the coordinator/facilitator as it is just Karen and Natasha who are accredited facilitators. We would like to recruit volunteers for the purpose to support Natasha on profiling RJ and co facilitation. Volunteers will undertake 5 self paced modules that will be sent into the ministry of Justice for marking before they are approved to enter into 5 days of facilitation training. The next opportunity for this training is being held in Dunedin at the end of July contact Natasha on 0800 925 242 if you would like to know more.
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