Restorative Arlington

During FY25, Restorative Arlington served our community by accepting 16 referrals to our Heart of Safety Restorative Justice Conferencing Program. The program supports victims of crime (people harmed) and people responsible for crime in exploring what happened, why, and how to move forward in ways that offer healing and practical measures for taking accountability. RA offered experiential learning sessions including a conference role play with our referral partners as part of our commitment to ongoing orientation and education. We joined a 5-year pilot program to offer community members an option to request and receive restorative justice services to address domestic and intimate partner violence directly from our organization. This is a new program representing a significant expansion in access to our services, as Heart of Safety requires a referral from our criminal legal system partners. A new staff member was hired to direct program design and implementation. We joined our local coordinated community response to prevent and address domestic, dating and sexual violence as part of this work, and regularly meet with a national technical assistance and evaluation team who act as partners on the pilot project. We developed a Circle Training program to address the specific needs of our community in collaboration with a local restorative justice facilitator with years of experience doing this work in our region, which will be piloted in FY26. We hired a part time Executive Director to support the integration and growth of our programs, increase organizational sustainability, and act as the public face of our organization to increase community visibility and public engagement. Staff participated in training from The Restorative Justice Project at Equal Justice USA to build internal capacity to train future program service providers. This alongside our Circle Training are essential steps towards organizational and program sustainability. We offered 9 Community Advisory Team meetings to offer information on our work, share updates, and create space for community and system partner stakeholders to voice their feedback. RA presented at the Mid-Atlantic Association for Court Management in September at the invitation of our local County Clerks Office, and offered the keynote speech at the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice at Restorative Justice Day in April. RA was invited to speak and offered a session on Nonviolent Communication at the June 2025 Restorative Justice in Education Conference hosted by The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University.