Outback Vandals

Back to REAL JUSTICE book information

A police sergeant returned to his rural community in the Australian outback to a vandalism incident that had caused a local uproar. The four offenders were young blacks who lived in the town or at the nearby aboriginal reserve (the equivalent of a US Native American reservation or Canadian First Nation reserve). They had broken into the building occupied by an all-white women's organization and trashed the interior and its contents.

Having just attended training for a new response to wrongdoing called "family group conferencing," the officer saw the situation as a perfect opportunity to put his new skills into practice. He also hoped that the family group conference would address the heightened racial tension that was a by-product of the incident. He first contacted the offenders and invited them, along with their families and friends, to meet with the vandalism victims "to find out what happened, see how people had been affected and decide how to repair the harm." He borrowed phrases he had just heard at the training to explain the process to the potential participants. When the offenders and their families accepted his offer of the conference, he then invited all of the women victims and their respective families and friends to participate. The day of the conference was warm and sunny, typical of days in the Australian outback. This was fortunate because there were so many people in the offenders' and victims' groups that the conference had to be held outdoors. The chairs were arranged in a large circle, with the victim's group to the police officer's left and the offender's group to the right. The officer began by reminding all the participants that the conference was voluntary and that they could leave the conference at any time. If the victims and offenders could reach an agreement, the matter could be settled then and there. The officer went around the group and introduced everyone. Then he asked each participant a series of questions.

First the offenders were asked to tell what happened. The youths were very forthcoming in admitting what they did and in expressing regret, which immediately reduced some of the bad feelings among the victims. When the boys were asked by the facilitating police officer, "What were you thinking about at the time?" they frankly admitted their resentment of the whites in their community, a prevalent feeling among blacks, but one which was rarely expressed aloud in the presence of the whites. When the officer asked "Who do you think has been affected?" they had only a very limited view of who and how others were affected by their wrongdoing, as is usually the case with young offenders.

Then the women whose building had been vandalized told how the vandalism had affected them. They told the boys that they understood their resentment of whites, but they also admitted how uncomfortable and sometimes frightened they felt to be a small group of white people in a largely black community. Just like the black youths' resentment, the white women's feelings of fear and discomfort had rarely been expressed aloud in the presence of blacks. Some of the victims also expressed anger, wondering if maybe the boys thought that white people could afford to repair the damage and that it would be no big deal. The most important issue, they explained, was not money; rather, the vandalism increased their fears and made them feel unsafe. As the police officer worked his way around the group, husbands, children and friends expressed similar feelings of fear and anger. As the boys and their families listened respectfully, the intensity of the victims' group's feelings gradually subsided.

The boys' families responded very sympathetically to the victims. They apologized and expressed shame for what their children had done and promised it would not happen again. They also seemed genuinely surprised to hear about the fears and discomfort of the white minority in the community, having always felt that the whites had the upper hand. They understood how the vandalism had intensified those fears and wanted to help make things right. By the time the conference turned to the issue of how to repair the harm, blacks and whites easily agreed to work together in the upcoming weekend to repair the damage to the building. Both groups had gained insight into each others' feelings. The young people now realized that they had not only damaged the property of a few people, but also had affected a great many other people very deeply, including their own families.

The two groups, feeling separate from one another at the outset of the conference, now merged into one community. In the informal period after the conference, when refreshments were served, clusters of blacks and whites engaged in animated conversation. The vandalism incident had provided an opportunity for healing among people who had lived together for all of their lives without expressing their true feelings. In the safety of the family group conference, they had talked in a real way about how they felt toward one another and had taken significant steps toward mutual understanding.

Some of the influential blacks who lived on the reserve told the policeman how reluctant they were to call the police when there was a problem. They feared offenders would simply be locked away. They suggested that other crimes might be handled through a family group conference as a better response to problems on the reserve. But I have saved the most ironic aspect of this story for last—the fact that the four vandals were only five, six, seven and eight years old. Under Australian law, the police officer had no real jurisdiction with children under ten years old, since they were not considered responsible for their own actions. Having just learned how to facilitate a family group conference, however, he recognized that the process would allow him to deal with the bad feelings the incident had created in the community, even though he could not formally charge the offenders with a crime.

Had there been a number "1" in front of the boys' ages, had they been 15, 16, 17 and 18 years old, in the normal course of the criminal justice system all four would have been charged with crimes. All of them would have gone to juvenile court and none of them would have gained the kind of insight and empathy that they acquired through the conference. Blacks and whites in the community would have been left with their anger, fears and mutual resentments.

Back to REAL JUSTICE book information