By Sheila G. Kelley, Development Coordinator
Sometimes a person who has been victimized just wants to find answers. Answers to questions from the one who offended or harmed them. Like why did they make the decisions they did, what the impacts of the harm were and what is needed to move forward and make it right.
Offender/Victim Ministries in Newton offers these opportunities through a process called restorative justice. Restorative justice invites “core-participants” in a specific incident to identify harms, needs and obligations in order to restore relationships and make things as right as possible.
According to Todd Lehman, OVM executive director, OVM focuses this work through three programs: 1) community justice programming (CJP), batterer invention program (BIP) and prison ministries.
CJP provides restorative conferencing, neighborhood accountability boards and parent-adolescent mediation. HCUW provides funding that helps pay CJP staff salary but also makes the possibility for a sliding-scale fee.
“We don’t want cost to be a barrier for anyone,” said Todd. “We are grateful that support from HCUW helps to make this service accessible for anyone in our community. Without such funding, we would have to charge a higher fee which could limit who in our communities could benefit from this restorative process.”
BIP is designed to hold those who have committed acts of domestic violence accountable for their abusive behaviors, tech nonviolent ways of being in relationships and promote safety for the victimized.
Next year will be the 50th year for the organization. Originally it was called Inter Faith Offender Concerns Committee. The committee partnered with the prison in Hutchinson.
“Volunteers from the community went and visited the inmates and that turned into what we call today the M-2 program – Match-2,” Todd explained. “You take a volunteer from outside and an inmate and match them together and they sit down once a month and have a conversation together, just to visit.”
They quickly moved into restorative justice work in that setting where they were finding that folks who were incarcerated really wanted to have a chance to talk to the people who they had harmed. They often don’t have an opportunity to apologize.
“The committee found out that people who were harmed, whether it was direct or indirect, had questions too,” Todd said. “Like what was going on, why did you choose us or why did you choose my loved one who isn’t here anymore, whatever the case was. So they had opportunity to make a live conversation happen back in the 80’s.”
An inmate must meet some criteria to be eligible for M-2. They qualify by how many visits they get in a year so if they get fewer than six visits a year from anybody outside the walls, that qualifies them to be part of the program.
“Some of it is behavior related,” Todd stated. “If you behave well, you can be part of this program.”
Currently OVM has about 50 volunteers who are making monthly visits.
“Many of the guys in prison have had people let them down. They are expecting to be let down so we want to demonstrate a different way of relating,” Todd said. “We understand there could be a month where a person can’t make their visit but we hope that’s the exception.”
M-2 had a few long term members pass away in the last couple of years but there were some that had volunteered 30 + years. Todd said they have had and still currently have long-term volunteers.
A second activity in PM is the prison arts program. It offers creative arts programs to inmates at the Hutchinson facility. Arts programs offer inmates a creative outlet for self-expression to help re-build self-esteem and promote a sense of connection with the community. Current opportunities include choir, creative writing and theatre.
“This summer there was a retired professor from Bethel College. There was a requirement for students to do some drama work. He has done that in the past so he took those students over to the Hutchinson prison where they were inside the prison working with inmates interested in drama and they created a production together,” Todd explained. “Then they performed that for the inmate population at one time and then separate from that, community members who wanted to go watch.”
Todd said they have the drama program and writing classes. There was a writing class that was in progress, but it got stopped due to COVID restrictions in 2020. There have also been choir groups to help inmates create music.
Todd is the only full-time employee at OVM. There are three part-time directors, one for each of the programs and a program/office coordinator.
OVM funding comes from a few different sources – various grants from foundations, Harvey County United Way, a state grant as part of the local community corrections, private donors and churches.
“Harvey County United Way has been faithful in granting our requests over the years. It is focused on the community justice programming so those funds help contribute to staff salary and then also costs for training volunteers,” Todd said. “If we didn’t receive the grants, we would have to do some searching to make up for it.”
The United Way 