ROYALTON, Vt. (AP) -
The Vermont Law School is getting a $3 million federal grant to continue running the National Center on Restorative Justice., U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has announced.
The program was created in 2019 in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice, l the University of Vermont and the University of San Diego, to educate future generations of juvenile and criminal justice professionals with alternative approaches to the criminal justice system, the Burlington Free Press reported.
“We need to rethink our approach to the entire justice system,” Leahy, senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Vermont Law School is the first school in the country to host the center, which offers a degree program, summer institute and creates education opportunities for incarcerated people, the newspaper reported.
Restorative justice is a “victim-focused, community-based approach” to responding to crimes, centering the harm experienced by victims and “what needs to happen to make things better,” according to the Community Justice Network of Vermont.
The approach been adopted by schools and courts as an alternative to suspensions or sentences in recent decades.
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