PracticeHint  

The "good guys and the bad guys"
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Jake stole the money Mick's mother gave him for his birthday and Mick is crying. Corinne is bullying and threatening Honey and making her afraid to come out of her room. The girls are teasing Alfie about his zits and with quivering lips he doesn't know what to do with his hurt and rage. These are the situations into which child and youth care workers must step, right? — problems they must solve, injustices put to right, right?

Maybe, maybe not. Conflicts and squabbles like these are the bread and butter of our work. We work with difficult kids, many of whom will act out aggressively and hurtfully, and others will come to us for protection and for justice. We are tempted to act as police, prosecutor, judge and jury so that order is restored: "Jake, give that money back to Mick!" "Corinne, you have no right to threaten Honey if she comes out of her room!"

Trouble is, we are not working only with Mick, Honey and Alfie. We are also working with Jake, Corinne, and the girls who are teasing Alfie. And when the only thing we do is to make our obviously sensible judgements, nobody is really learning anything for themselves.

We each find ourselves right in the middle of a microcosm of the society in which people hurt and get hurt. And into this have come more effective ways of working with both aggressors and victims. When youngsters leave us and there are no longer child and youth workers around to intervene, we hope that the offenders have different attitudes and behaviours, and that the victims are better able to stand up for themselves.

Central to the new ways of working are the methods of restorative justice, applicable in the dorms and hallways of our programs as much as in the juvenile courts. In this system we teach rather than judge, we bond rather than reject, we bring offender and victim together rather than interpose a "justice system", and, most important, we work towards an understanding of each others' circumstances and feelings. The aim is not to pronounce on who is right and who is wrong and what punishment or consequence should be set: the aim is on finding ways and opportunities for them to make things right and to restore both offender and victim to their place — first in our microcosm, and then in the wider community.

Next time kids are having a "go" at each other, you have more than the judge role. You are there for both of them.

The good guys and the bad guys.