A new book has a chapter on McLean County's use of restorative justice.
Suzanne Montoya and Kevin Jones wrote about their efforts using listening circles to connect members of the community with differing views after a police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Montoya is the director of court services for McLean County, overseeing probation and supervision. She and Jones initially connected a decade ago. Jones’ background is education. He worked at the Regional Alternative School in Bloomington and for the Regional Office of Education. Jones now practices restorative justice fulltime through his organization, Pathways 2 Restorative Justice.
Jones and Montoya initially collaborated on restorative justice conferences in the juvenile justice system, facilitating conversations between those who cause harm and those who have harm done to them.
When editor Sally Wolf, a former director of court services for Ford County, approached Montoya about contributing to a new book called Restorative Justice Up Close, Montoya initially approached Jones to write about that.
“…but her book was pretty heavy on that content, to be honest,” she said. “We wanted to think, what’s another story and how can we approach and use a slightly different topic of how you can use restorative practices.”
Montoya and Jones compiled testimonials from a series of listening circles beginning in 2020. Rev. Brigitte Black had reached out to Jones about a way to bring the community together to process the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Jones had led several listening circles on the topic in other places.
In cooperation with Black and the Bloomington chapter of Not in Our Town, they organized a virtual listening circle. One hundred people signed up.
Jones said listening circles are distinct from a typical restorative justice conference.
“You really can’t say, well, this person caused this person harm,” he said. “It’s looking at it through the lens of the entire community has been impacted by—COVID. By the murder of George Floyd.”
Jones said listening circles aren't a dialog. They're a way for communities to find shared empathy and heal.
“It is not a solutions circle,” he said. “It is a solution for people to be heard.”
Jones trained a team of facilitators, including Montoya, to lead small groups in breakout rooms on Zoom. Additional sessions took place virtually and, eventually, in person, navigating through a range of additional topics like election anxiety, the COVID-19 pandemic and hate crimes against the LGBTQ and Asian communities.
Most recently, Jones led a listening circle at Heartland Community College on the political divide in the country.
Jones said listening circles aren't new. The practice is rooted in indigenous communities. And unlike restorative justice conferences, it doesn't necessarily take a trained facilitator to guide a listening circle. All it takes is groups of people willing to hear what others have to say.
“I remember someone saying, ‘We didn’t fix anything’ on the debrief,” he said. “This is not a circle to fix something. But it does prepare you to move into smaller groups to try to start talking about what we can do.”
In their chapter, called The Healing Power of Connecting Communities, Montoya and Jones noted a police officer who was nervous to enter the listening circle given anger toward law enforcement in the wake of George Floyd's death.
"Despite his initial apprehension," they wrote, “he knew it was important to attend to have the opportunity to express his own thoughts and feelings not only as a human being, but as an officer of the law."
Montoya said that humanization has been one of the greatest benefits of using restorative justice practices throughout her career, which began in juvenile probation.
“It’s so impactful when you can sit across from a young youth whose feet don’t even touch the floor and know that they damaged something on your property,” she said. “To see them as a child, it really changes, I think, how a victim feels.”
Montoya and Jones' chapter concludes by noting how restorative practices have become ingrained in local school systems, youth agencies and the juvenile justice system. Montoya even uses the techniques as a leadership skill to resolve conflicts in her office and ensure workers feel heard.
“I would give a lot of credit to our local law enforcement,” she said. “They have been very proactive and responsive to the use of restorative justice conferences with juveniles. They’ve been some of our biggest allies.”
That includes a diversion collaboration with school resource officers, who are sworn police officers assigned to public schools. Montoya said crime statistics indicating an uptick in juvenile violence don’t tell the full story. Many of those stats, she said, don’t include a disproportionate rise in the number of youths diverted through the juvenile probation system.
Montoya and Jones said they hope to lead the way, making McLean County a model for how restorative practices transform communities. They've been invited to participate in a statewide task force on the topic led by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Still, Jones said restorative justice only works if you use it and McLean County has more work to do.
“I’ve been living this and I travel the country and get to see so many spaces internationally where it’s on such a big scale,” he said. “When I talk about leading, I’m talking about basic capacity building. More people. Especially from that proactive lens.
“We’re all on a journey,” he said, “and it’s just how do we keep moving forward?”
Restorative Justice Up Close: First-Person Accounts of an Approach That Works is available through The New Press.
