Keith Roberts
News Reporter

The college is looking to change the way Canada’s justice system operates with its new transformative justice program set to begin in September 2009, said school officials.
The program looks at “new ways to deal with age old problems of youth in conflict with the law and in school.” said head of Lakeshore’s police foundations program, Arthur Lockhart.
Transformative justice consists of an offender, their victim and members of the community where the crime occured having a meeting.  The crime’s effects are discussed with all parties taking part in figuring out why the crime has occurred and what should be done, not just as a punishment, but also how to prevent the same crime from happening again.  
This method has roots in Aboriginal culture, said Lockhart.
 “For hundreds of years its how conflict was resolved,” he said.
Lockhart said Canada’s current justice system isn’t up to par.
“It doesn’t work, hasn’t worked, it’s not working and still won’t work,” he said.
Lockhart has worked with school boards in implementing the practices of transformative justice into their schools as an alternative to suspending or expelling students.
“It’s an alternative to the traditional criminal justice system,” said Associate Dean of Lakeshore’s School of Social and Community Services, Gina Antonacci. “It diverts youth from the long and cumbersome traditional system which is adversarial and no one leaves feeling good at the end of it. Transformative justice offers the opportunity to make the community better in that it doesn’t involve further victimizing anyone.”
Manager of day programs and community services at Scarborough’s Rosalie Hall, Cathy Sorichetti, has worked with similar programs in the past and said that despite the lack of criminal charges being imposed “it held youth accountable for their actions and they have to answer for them to community members… the youth is given a second chance to make a better choice for them self and the community gets to impose a meaningful task that is in keeping with the crime,” said Sorichetti.
“We want Humber to be the number one place for education on transformative justice,” said Lockhart. “We want – when people think of Transformative Justice to say, ‘Oh, I guess you better call the Lakeshore campus.’”
Lockhart said he envisions Lakeshore, in the future, being host to International Conferences that celebrate initiatives being made on Transformative Justice worldwide.
The program would be available to those already in professions, organizations or sectors that touch the Criminal Justice System, said Antonacci.