PopTech: Four questions for when things go wrong

When someone does something wrong, there’s always a story, or two, or more. Our justice system is designed to weed through the stories, discern the most probable truth and mete appropriate punishment.

As that system has become overwhelmed, its ability to hear those individual stories has diminished. The result, too often, is a one-size-fits-all resolution, leaving neither the victim the satisfied nor the perpetrator held accountable in a constructive manner.

Community Conferencing sees the results of this on the streets of Baltimore: too many first-time offenders who end up lost and corrupted while conditions in the neighborhoods simply get worse. Working with the justice system, the group provides an alternative forum for the community to take responsibility for its own. (see video).

Their approach allows people to safely, collectively and effectively prevent and resolve conflicts and crime. Finding legal and victim-acceptable solutions costs less and most often results in giving young people a chance to correct course.

In a community conference session, the facilitator is responsible for getting together the perpetrators, the victims, the families of both and others who felt impacted by the act. Their job is to agree on these four questions:

• What happened?

• How have people been affected?

• What do we do now?

• How do we prevent this from happening again?

More than 8,000 people have used this system to resolve property crimes, simple battery and minor thefts. The concept is slowly spreading.

What’s interesting from a RapidChange perspective is that these four questions are at the core of almost every strong corporate safety program. While individual accountability is crucial, it isn’t the most urgent question. Instead, leaders need to determine what went wrong, who was hurt, have we corrected the system and can we prevent this from happening again.

There will be plenty of time for blame.