Service Area:

The Essex Community Justice Center serves Essex Town, Essex Junction, Colchester, Milton, Jericho, Underhill and Westford.

Vision:

The Essex Community Justice Center envisions safe, expansive and resilient communities in which the response to conflict and crime is restorative and healing, enhances community and reduces further harms.

Mission:

The Essex Community Justice Center creates opportunities with the communities we serve for restorative approaches to crime and conflict that;

  • Promote justice for those affected by crime by focusing on the harm caused

  • Allow those responsible for harm to accept active responsibility for addressing and repairing the harm they caused

  • Educate, build empathy, restore dignity, and enable healing

  • Support the needs of those reintegrating from prison into a more connected community life

  • Strengthen individuals and the communities we serve through education and support to prevent further harms

Values:

We believe that all people living in a community are interconnected through a web of relationships, and that conflict and crime harms and affects people—victims, family members, community members, offenders and others.  We believe that conflict and crime damages relationships, and disrupts peace and safety in the community.  We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that no one should be defined by their biggest mistakes.  We believe that justice is more likely to be achieved when victims, affected parties and the community are engaged in and central to the justice process.  We believe that all victims of crime should have access to restorative processes upon request.  We believe that effective restorative processes build empathy, restore dignity, re-empower victims, enable healing and strengthen communities as we strive toward a just society in which all lives have equal value.  We believe in reintegration, supporting the needs of offenders and removing barriers to successful reentry while also encouraging accountability/acceptance of responsibility for harm caused.  We believe that restorative justice nurtures hope – the hope of healing for victims, the hope of change for offenders, and the hope of greater civility for society.