or call during business hours. hello, and on behalf of san francisco, welcome to mosaic. >> justice is an important word, a critical work, -- word. the things we all want to have for ourselves that we want to see others have as well, when things are right, things are fair, accounts are settled, a jury has declared guilty or innocent, a punishment has been

imposed, we probably all say it, that looks like justice has been done and we were probably all say we want to live in a just society, which justice is possible for all. but what is the human story behind that word, justice? looking deeper we might see that justice is more than a principal on which we hope to act, deeper than discerning wrong on this side and right on that side and leaving it at that, justice involves a human relationship. when an injustice has been done, a human relationship has been wounded, damaged and torn. and that relationship needs healing. today, we will talk with the director of the ministry called restorative justice. as his mission statement says, we provide people affected by crime, victims and offenders, within our communities, support to heal. through prayer, prevention, intervention and guidance. stay with us and after this brief break, we will learn about the meaning of restorative justice and what they are doing to teach it and practice it. ♪ [ music ]

hello and welcome to mosaic today. let me introduce my colleague, julio escobar. julio, is your title director of the office of restorative justice?>> yeah, i coordinate the ministry. named restorative justice. >> you work at the central

office? >> you told me a couple of things, one is that you are -- your mtrrestorative justice is called ministry, you don't call it an office, bureau, program. the second thing you insisted on informing me about was it is a ministry of presence. so come help us understand those two things. >> well, when i say presence, i mean not we need to be present. present when we meet people, whether it is an offender or whether it is a victim, we need to be present and be accompanying the families in the process of their journey in recovery, whether they are in prison or jail or whether it is a person that has lost a family member in violence. >> as i looked at what you do

and your mission statement, we will get into that, it does seem that you acknowledge that there is a relationship between the offender and the victim. may be that relationship did not exist before, but now they are in a relationship, that is the part that strikes me, i know nothing about this except what you are going to tell us, but the relationship is there and it needs some kind of acknowledgment and attending and that is what you let people understand pick>> yeah, the relationship is there, but there needs to be a bridge that brings two parts together. that's where restorative justice is all about, when harm has occurred and in particular when there is a crime. so, that breach needs to be connected -- that bridge needs to be connected when they both agree. >> it seems to me that it is

different from sort of our adversarial justice system, we are used to the idea of the court and two adversaries settling something, what is different about what restorative justice tries to bring into it? >> so, the current system, what it does, it attempts to separate both. so, there is no opportunity for the two parties to learn about what happens. restorative justice brings that opportunity. what happens in this instance on this crime, your focus of your office is on the criminal justice system or the civil things as well. >> our focus is to bring the biblical restorative justice to people that are inside jails and prisons, and to bring the same concept, the same approach to someone that has lost a family member in violence.>> it says on your mission statements

that you provide both crime victims and offenders with support to heal. because it is clear to us, i think, we think crime victims need to heal but you are also saying terminals, people who have committed a crime also need healing how do you work on that? >> how that works is criminals, or anyone that is in jail, most of the time, they have been a victim first. >> i have heard that by experts, too. i'm using the word criminal, i think in your language, you use people that are incarcerated, people that are in jail, in prison, they are incarcerated, we are not judging they have actually committed a crime, we are saying this is the situation in which they find themselves, they are incarcerated. >> correct. what we attempt to do, this time we are going to speak with incarcerated people, we intend

to bring the word of god for them to realize that they have committed, or they have harmed other people. that is the first step for people that we go visit. they need to have this encounter with god first before anything else can happen.>> so, you try to awaken the consciousness of the person who is incarcerated. i have heard this set as well, many times that people who commit offenses have been offended against before, and they are bringing the anger that they feel into another relationship where it doesn't belong. >> so, how do you meet with them and bring them to realize that kind of thing? >> well, it is not just anger, it can be trauma, it can be that they have been victimized first. it can be that they have been

abused. in this process of being harmed, themselves first, what we do is we bring the faith. okay, and in the faith, our hope is that god, they will have a relationship with god first. and that realizing that they are going to recognize that they have hurt somebody. >> and that it is not there right to hurt someone, that god wants more for them. >> correct. what we look for is that they have an encounter, that they find that they have responsibility. for the harm that they have caused. that is one of the other steps in restorative justice, that they need to be responsible in order for them to begin, the

process of healing themselves. >> i would guess that is difficult. to the incarcerated seek you out? what is the means by which you meet them? >> our goal is first to bring to them god. and it is unknown at what point they would realize that they have responsibility to be, for example, when we go, our hope is that they meet god somehow and by the time that they are going to have this session, that they have the responsibility to be two years, three years, it can be the same day when we go meet them and in the way that we speak with them, they realize, okay, i need to take responsibility. >> ikeeaand whwe come back we will ask more about the process by which this happens.>> so how was work?

sam: it was thirteen hundred hours. my math class, room 302, was in the trenches. davy roth had it the worst. fractions were coming at him left and right. he just didn't get the damn things. two days ago, i tried to teach him what 1/4 of 1/2 was using different sizes of blocks. yesterday, i tried again by dividing up pizza. both missions failed. rachel: oh no. sam: but today...i was ready. m: creed a rachel: mbat math game where the only way to beat the enemy is to out-fraction them. davy conquered every last denominator. my game was so successful, the principal is deploying it

to math squadrons all over the school. rachel: wow! sam: anyhoo, how was your day? rachel: oh, uhh... today my boss treated the office to salad wraps. sam: mmm, salad wraps. rachel: i know.

hello and welcome back. we are talking about julio escobar about restorative justice. coolio, i understand that you initiate meetings or mediation between offenders and their victims, survivors and whatnot, and you have sort of an agenda for that in which you help open everybody's mind to what their practice is, so, do you meet these people through their case manager, parole officers? how does that work? >> we work with partners and the partners are the probation department, probation officers, but also they refer their cases to social workers or a case manager. that time wh minor crimes

are le other ses are preventive and so we have different cases in how we use the practice. >> there is a focus on criminal behavior but there is also family applications or environmental applications?>> for example we may have a family that needs to speak with their son, the relationship is broken and they come to us seeking help, mediating what they have, for example it could be the use of drugs, or it could be a teenager that is misbehaving and entering into gangs or violence. to come and

meet with us, then we can hold a meeting. >> okay, so these personal meetings, you have small personal meetings i understand, but your department also does activities that i think involve many partnerships and sort of an educational program as well? >> yeah, so we worked with former incarcerated people, so when they come out, how do they bring to society? do they reenter the community? how are they able to get back to the workforce and so on. so, what we do is we have a conference and we have many partners that offer opportunities to former incarcerated people from housing to education to employment, job readiness and so forth. >> these partners are important. let me ask you a few things, we have some photos to show of some of your activities and i like to ask them to run them

now so you can let us know what is happening in these. tell us what we are seeing in this first set. >> in this particular photo, we have myself and we are holding a prayer service on the street where the son of this mother was killed and we held a prayer service and we contact the family, we ask them if it is okay for us to come do a prayer service and they agree and whatever occurs, that's where we go do the prayer service. >> you do this regularly, i think we have photos of three or four different events to show, these are on the streets of san francisco, reclaiming the spot of the murder. >> for every homicide in the county in san francisco, we do the prayer service, for every homicide. we bring a priest and we hold

these prayer services. >> let me ask for the next set of slides, there's a couple here that have a different look. a photo of your group of volunteers. who are these people? >> we have the missionaries from the charity of mother teresa and volunteers that along to the detention ministry. the group that goes into the jails and juvenile facilities and this photo was from a meeting that we took after we had one of our meetings. we have father john gimenez in the back and different volunteers that participate. >> in the next photo also a group of volunteers. >> this was a delegation of california bishops.

we went there to look at the facility and the different aspects. >> okay, and the next that i believe is a candlelight vigil, this is for crime survivors? >> we did a prayer service at night, this is a vigil and that is a photo that is showing their where people are in the community and ready to come and family members, regardless of what happens, we do this. >> gathered in a church in this next photo i see? >> this one was in sacramento. in the cathedral and we had a large, large group of people come for a conference and we did a prayer service together. >> in the next set, it shows a young man, his funeral memorial i would say, this is a picture

of the victim of a crime. >> yes, this was in palo alto and he was killed in a drive-by shooting, and we did this prayer service in palo alto a few years ago, so we do this for the family that is killed. >> let me see the next one, it shows men that are in detention of some kind. >> yeah, we have detention facilities for youth. i have seen as young as 10-year- old, young people incarcerated, specifically in san francisco, and this is a sample of what the facility may look like. because they are underage, we are not able to show actual pictures, but this is what it looks like inside of the facility. >> a small sample of some of the things you do, i can read a

list of these other activities you do, when we come back in our next segment and i know you will be asking for volunteers as well. so, i want to make clear to people that, tell them what kind of skills they should bring if they are going to be volunteers or if you can take people without particular special skills. >> we will talk about that in our next segment, we will be back after this break. >>

we are talking today about the very serious prospect of justice and a special kind called restorative practice as shown by julio escobar. the word prayer, prevention, guidance, mediation, all kinds of things, and you have a list of your recently passed offense, you just had your recognition awards dinner for the community people that help you. coming up, explained to me what these are, because people are invited to come to them and to understand what they are doing, and i think you would not mind having volunteers for most of these as well. >> you have the reentry conference fair in september, what is that? >> is a big conference and what we have is over 40 nonprofit organizations that offer services for the people that are coming out of jails and

prisons for them to get back into society but we also have discussions going from different topics where people can attend and that goes parallel with the people that come in tables. so, executive directors that offer services to people, coming out of jails. they can come and table. because this is a restorative justice conference. we also invite crime survivors, nonprofit organizations to come and table, so we have both the same location, the same day and we have people that are formally -- formerly incarcerated. >> you have retreats for families and friends of prisoners? >> we have retreats for formerly incarcerated people, crime survivors, we have retreats for families who have

somebody in prison and then we have our retreat fo volunteers. >> i want to ask about that, because i have no experience with prisons or the criminal justice system, thank goodness i guess, if i wanted to volunteer, are there opportunities for someone with professional skills, zero skills, just a good nature?>> certainly. our ministry base really is made of volunteers. whether they are clergy or laypeople. here, what is important is the time and the heart. no special skills. of course you need to have catholic believe in faith. because that is what we come and share with the people when we are coming into the jails. outside, if you want to help in a retreat or if you want to help in a conference or an event that we have, you don't

necessarily have to be catholic. but you need to have the time and hard to come until. >> we talked about this a bit. it seems to me that this kind of mediation technique, some of those can be used in a secular way. but you are saying you see, as a christian, a deeper layer, and that is the soul of the person and the love and relationship in which we are supposed to dwell with each other and that has been broken or damaged and you are trying to make people aware of that. i think it is really good. you know, in the works of mercy, jesus says, i was in prison and you came to visit me. i have never quite understood that frankly because he says i was hungry, you fed me, i was naked, you close to me, i was thirsty, you gave me a drink, but i always wondered when i heard that about being in prison, what does that mean you are in prison because you belong theremore clearly and

that that is a damaged, broken person who is my brother and that needs that. i see that in the christian tradition of course jesus himself was a prisoner condemned to death and for the first 300 years of the church, the christians weren't the conventional law-abiding people, they were the lawbreakers and imprisoned quite frequently so we have a long tradition of being among the prisoners. >> so if you are in prison, jesus says you know, when did you come and visit me? because that is a question, when? the answer there is that when we are called to do these and we are called to do these because when you are in prison, you need somebody to talk to. you need someone that you can share exactly your conscious. you need someone that you can share i committed a crime, i need to have someone that i can go back to. that goes in relation to the question, when. that is when we are called to

answer that question and be present and that is how we use the motto of being present. in the most difficult times when people are alone and isolated and wanting to transform themselves. they need may be a word of encouragement, they need some direction. that's when we become prisoners in people's lives. >> tell me briefly about this. i saw you welcomed a group of high school students from out of town. they are in town here doing some work, can you tell me what they are doing? >> neighborhood action, that is a national entity that has mission trips for young catholic teens. the group that we have is fr washington. they have come to learn about restorative justice and the practice through videos and the principles that we use. they are doing greeting cards

for father's day, mother's day and christmas. for prisoners as well as crime survivors. >> julio, thank you for being here. i want to encourage everyone who is interested in this to contact julio's restorative justice webpage and volunteer. thank you very much for being with us. see you on the next mosaic. you could save energy by living off the grid. completely. you could generate your own energy, at home. maybe you could save energy by weaving your own shoes... out of flax.

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a pair of large wildfires causing new evacuations. dueling protests in portland. and outright group planned a demonstration and were met by counter-protester's. similar protests are planned in the bay area later today we start this morning with a check of the forecast. starting out with a look at the satellite. high-pressure is still in place keeping temperatures warm inland. in fact we will see

temperatures topping out in the middle 90s are some of the fire zones today. keeping a close eye on fire weather. ck