ABSTRACT
Community boards are one of several nonadversarial decisionmaking innovations inspired by restorative and community justice philosophies. Others include victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, and circle sentencing (Bazemore, 1998). The overarching goals of all of these program models are: ( 1) to better include community members in the justice process, (2) to identify and rectify harm caused by criminal offenses, and/or (3) to successfully reintegrate offenders into community life. Community boards are exemplified by the Vermont model, in which citizen volunteers serve on local boards that negotiate reparative agreements with offenders. In 1999, the Vermont Department of Corrections (VDOC) received the prestigious Ford Foundation Innovations in Government Award for its development of the reparative boards. As of August 1999, there were 46 boards operating in 24 townships, with a pool of 315 board members. These boards have processed more than 4,000 cases since their inception in November 199 5.
