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� C; ��munity G� � � ;. � l � i � i i�. 7 i -- Lakes Area Restorative Justice Project 2010 - Year End Report A year of Growth and Continuing Contributions from tARJP to the Citizens of Crow Wing County 2010 finds us in our 5th year of program operations. Many changes both large and small have occurred this year. We have experienced our largest amount of program usage growth throughout the entire year. Starting in the spring of the year our Executive Director, Roger Lynn, announced his desire to step down as director so that he could move on to be the director of the Youth Wellness Initiative program that we started in 2009. The YWI program has progressed to the point of creating their own board, having their own treasurer and office space with staff, located in Brainerd, MN. Roger continues to work with LARJP as a contracted Grant writer, working closely with our Fundraising Committee and new Director. August 2010 we hired our new Executive Director, Jim Oraskovich. Jim comes to our program with a lot of experience working with youth, as a retired local School Superintendant as well as a former principal and teacher. Jim is new to restorative justice, but has already proved to be a great asset to our program, because of his knowledge of the area and connections to the whole community of Crow Wing County from his former employment. His desire to help improve the quality of �ife for our area youth shows through in his enthusiasm and drive to master his new position. Jim is spearheading our Strategic Planning update as the Board reviews our original goals and objectives. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to host Greg Herzog with the MN Office of Justice Programs and Nancy Riestenberg with the MN Dept of Education, both of whom specialize in Restorative Justice at our Stakeholders meeting at the end of November. After their presentations, we held discussion sessions on three key questions to see what the needs of our community are and to determine; are there areas we need to improve our program as it is currently operating, are we meeting the needs that our ;ommunity has and are there areas of need that we can expand to assist with even more. Taking part in this �'much needed discussion were Community Partners from the judicial system, law enforcement, education, the faith community, program board members, volunteer facilitators, staff and a few area students. From the information presented and discussed at the Stakeholders meeting the Board is now working on refining and/or redefining our program to meet the needs of our community. One of those needs is the significant increase in our caseload over the course of the year. During various times we have seen an increase of anywhere from 30% to 50% in our case referrals and upwards of 35% to 100% increase in the number of offenders, victims and/or community members participating in our program. The number of people involved in individual cases continues to increase along with the complexities of the cases referred. We again offered two Volunteer training sessions this year, one in the spring and another this fall. With the increase in the caseload, so is the need for volunteers increased as well. Again we are fortunate to have Stephanie Haider as our Volunteer Coordinator to provide top notch training for our facilitators as well as ongoing in-services throughout the year. Stephanie has more than 30 years experience working with restorative justice and providing training in several areas of Minnesota and throughout the country. A snap shot of our case statistics through November 30th, 2010: 60 Cases to date 101 Offenders served 117 Victims served 149 Community Member participants 70 Contracts made 44 Completed Successful 4 Unsuccessful 22 Contracts in progress 12 Offenders Aborted / Declined Service 6 Cases yet to conference (19 Offenders) Prior Year Comparison: Cases Referals Offenders �-' Victims CM Participants 2009 2010 45 60 73 101 63 117 85 149 % Increase 5 year History 35% 282 38°/a 463 86% 407 75% 633 (07-10)