The second session was led by Kate, a member of the local criminal bar, and Jennifer, a Restorative Justice worker from Nishnawbe Aski Legal Services Corporation (NALSC). They started the session by asking the students to choose what they thought was an appropriate consequence for minor criminal offences.\u00a0 This lead into a discussion about the concept of sentencing and an introduction into how the court develops consequences or sentences.\u00a0 In the second part of the session, students prepared arguments for the R v. Desmoulin<\/em> fact scenario and participated in a mock sentencing debate to determine what Desmoulin\u2019s sentence should be.<\/p>\n In the third session, the same case was used as the basis for a sentencing circle and was facilitated by Jennifer.\u00a0 Jennifer brought in a local elder and ran the mock circle the same way that she runs real circles at NALSC.\u00a0 After the program, Jennifer asked the students to consider the differences between the sentences arrived at with the two methods \u2013 with the sentencing hearing the sentence involved jail time, whereas with the circle the offender was put on probation, had to complete community service and write a letter of apology to the victim.<\/p>\n On their website, Nishnawbe Aski Legal Services describes the circle process.<\/p>\n The Circle process is about healing.\u00a0 It is not intended to be adversarial. Rather, its purpose is to create an open and safe environment in which participants can discuss what happened; understand the conflict; and talk about how to deal with what happened.\u00a0 The Circle provides an opportunity for all community members to help resolve conflict, create healthy relationships, and learn positive ways of dealing with conflict.[1]<\/em><\/p>\n The students came away with a better understanding of these two ways of determining a sentence.\u00a0 Their insights are reflected in the collages that they created as a culminating activity.\u00a0 Each group of students created two \u2013 one that represented their experiences in the sentencing hearing and one that represented their experiences in the sentencing circle.<\/p>\n The collage on sentencing circles includes the words story, voice, coming full circle, unforgettable; while the collage on sentencing hearings has the words power, change and has several pictures of men in suits without their heads.<\/p>\n by Bryn Bamber<\/p>\n [1]\u00a0\u201cRestorative Justice,\u201d Nishnawbe Aski Legal Services Corporation, accessed May 1, 2015, http:\/\/www.nanlegal.on.ca\/article\/restorative-justice-127.asp<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This February, Nicole, an education student at Lakehead University and a Project Officer for the Ontario Justice Education Network (OJEN) headed back to her alma mater, Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School (DFC) in Thunder Bay, to deliver a four session justice education project that compared and contrasted sentencing circles with sentencing hearings. The workshop took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[56,67,68,69],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-ojen-blog","tag-mock-trials","tag-aboriginal","tag-restorative-justice","tag-sentencing-circles"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/ojen2024.turnbull.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Optimized-FullSizeRender-16-1.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"adnan","author_link":"https:\/\/ojen2024.turnbull.co\/en\/author\/adnan"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"Optimized-Optimized-FullSizeRender-15](\"https:\/\/ojen2024.turnbull.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Optimized-Optimized-FullSizeRender-15-2-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n