This is all new to me....doing a blog....social web...I have known about all of this for years. After all, I am the mother of three now adult children.

Currently I serve on a community accountability board that deals with juvenile offenders. I have been doing this for two years. I have always been interested in the concept of restorative justice and with that interest and my service on this board, I have recently become more excited about the idea of the concept of restorative justice being used in the juvenile arena.

I will admit to not knowing a great deal of information about the concept other than what I have seen on various television shows, magazine articles, etc. I feel that the idea of "healing" the offender as well as the offended seems like a very good idea to me.

Recently in my community, two young men did a great deal of damage to the city cemetery. Part of their sentence was to apologize publicly to the city. This caused much discussion in the community as one council member in particular thought this would be horribly damaging to the juveniles. I spent alot of time emailing him trying to get him to see the point of view, that giving a heartfelt apology would actually be of benefit to the juvenile. Eventually, they apologized during a city council meeting without their faces being shown....I was pleased that they were allowed to apologize for both the city's sake as well as their own.