We work to help juveniles who've committed offenses re-connect with their families, schools and communities to form healthy relationships and develop tools to more effectively manage their conflicts. With support of $150,000, we could mediate more than 250 additional cases, impacting youth, their families, and community members.
Youth criminal justice system involvement is a major issue for Chicago, and it is a problem that can be addressed through early intervention. We work with youth who have been arrested for low-level offenses. The courts recognize that youth benefit from the opportunity to talk openly with their families and the victims of their crimes. During our process, mediators help youth reflect on the effect of their actions and work to develop options for repairing harm done to their communities.
This project will support training for volunteer mediators as well as referral, intake, screening and mediation processes. We will use the funds to provide our mediators with the highest level of training, support our on-site presence with probation officers and with the Juvenile State's Attorney's office and to sustain our case management team's work. Our mediators create an environment where people can talk safely and confidentially and be creative in finding solutions to repair harm.
We believe that providing juvenile offenders an opportunity to re-connect to their communities and repair harm for low-level crimes helps disrupt the cycle of youth entering the juvenile justice and then the corrections system. We help hundreds of victims and offenders per year in this way already, and with your support we can help even more.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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