Leading with Compassion to Foster Purpose and Connection

What is safety and how do we, as community members, create a sense of safety for ourselves and for others? These are questions I’ve grappled with for years and hoped Susan Russell could shed some light on. In her role as the Reentry Coordinator at the Community Restorative Justice Center in St. Johnsbury, Susan has spent the last ten years working with people who have acted in ways that made their communities feel unsafe. As she reflected on my questions, I was struck by the breadth and depth of her understanding of and connections within her community. I wondered what it would be like if her holistic and compassionate approach to creating a felt sense of safety was the norm.

Work that supports those who have harmed and been harmed

The Community Restorative Justice Center serves Caledonia County and Southern Essex County. For those unfamiliar with restorative justice (I’m quoting from their website), “Restorative Justice is a system of criminal justice that enables people harmed by crime, the person who committed the crime, and affected members of the community to be directly involved in responding to the offense.” According to Russell, the center prioritizes the needs of the harmed party, so they also serve people beyond the geographic boundaries of the center, when it benefits the survivor.

Russell describes her clients as people who have engaged in an offense against a person and/or the community. “That can be anything from taking a candy bar at a grocery store to committing an assault on someone,” she says, noting that the types of offenses are all over the map, from “ones that would be considered low-level events to very serious crimes—anything that causes individuals to feel harmed.”

Being a safe person to create a safe environment

You might think that such close contact with people who have caused harm in the community would lead Susan to feel a greater sense of danger than most, but when asked if she feels safe in her community, her immediate answer is a resounding yes. She recognizes that this is not the norm though, particularly in these times, when acts of violence are more commonly reported. “There is a heightened sense of fear of the unknown,” she says, “fear of people hanging around the streets, fear of going to the park because there may be a needle in the grass—an overall sense of anxiety.”

Another cause of stress is an unrealistic expectation of police. “A lot of people think the police should prevent things from happening,” Susan has noticed,” but police are only able to respond. They’re not mind readers. They can’t predict what’s going to happen. So I think they get bashed a lot for not preventing violence.” Adding to this poor perception of police is the fact that many police departments are understaffed, making it difficult for them to respond as quickly or effectively as they and the community would prefer.

Taking personal responsibility for community safety

What Susan describes is a world that is feeling less and less safe and a system of protection that is only useful after the fact. For Susan, the solution is obvious: We’re all personally responsible for creating safety in our communities. “If I’m a safe person,” Susan says, “others can be their authentic self,” instead of falling back on old defense systems that lead to harmful behavior. “And if I see someone accosting another person, I’m willing to take the risk on the behalf of the other person. To me, if we don’t speak out about those little things that make people feel unsafe, it increases the lack of safety in our community.”

Beyond individual acts that increase safety, Susan sees opportunities to change the system–to change the rules of the community–in order to create a safer environment. Susan has been an integral part of such efforts in her community. In addition to the work she does at the center, she is also on teams where community members and agencies come together to identify and resolve safety concerns in the Northeast Kingdom.

Most recently, Susan was part of a team seeking to embed a mental health crisis professional within the police department. Now, St. Johnsbury police have options. Instead of arresting community members who are causing a disturbance but are not deemed dangerous enough to detain, they can offer an embedded professional to deescalate the situation and help the person find the support or services they need to heal and integrate more safely in the community.

She is also working in her local prison to make restorative practices part of the cultural norm and build deep connections with the administration, staff, and folks who are incarcerated. It will be a challenge to build trust within a community that is constantly changing, but Susan is up to the task. “We’ll have to find the right combination of restorative practices that will appeal to everyone, educate people about what restorative justice is, and figure out how to embed those practices in a way that will grow and be sustained in a correctional facility,” she says.

Exploring safety with those who have behaved unsafely

When people come to the Community Restorative Justice Center, they may not understand why they committed the crime or engaged in the behavior that landed them there. They likely don’t have the skills to ensure they don’t make similar mistakes in the future. In order to help clients get to an aha moment about their behavior, Susan and staff create an environment where the work can be done.

“We don’t close our door to anyone, we suspend judgment, and we practice radical hospitality or acceptance,” Susan says.  “We try to accept the person unconditionally without accepting the behavior unconditionally. We stay open to hearing about catalysts, risks, triggers, patterns, etc. that led a person to commit the acts they committed so that when we approach people, we’re informed and when working alongside them, we can reinforce the positive changes they’re making while building motivation to work in that direction, and as we get to know them, we can hold up a mirror so that they can see when things are about to go south.”

Susan sees the center as a place where she and staff can hold the clients in moments of tension, discuss it, and be real about it. “We’re not here to tell people what they want to hear. We’re here to honestly expose things that may be dangerous and create a safe space where people can lay down their shame in order to grow into safety. We do all our work through connection, helping clients mine out the things that are causing them to be unsafe and looking at how to increase safe behaviors. We help them figure out the root causes of their unsafe behavior and explore new ways to be safe.”

Creating space for this type of work is a team effort at the Community Restorative Justice Center. Susan smiles as she describes the foundation for their work: “at times the volunteers and I feel like we may not be on exactly the same wavelength but we’re oscillating at the same frequency.” Within that frequency, Susan says, “we are intentional about how we interact with one another so we model what we want to see happen with our clients. If we have a disagreement, it’s out in the open. We don’t attack one another. We model good communication skills, naming whatever issues come up. When we’re walking through a troubling emotion, we model safe communication and behavior. This supports safety and teaches clients how to communicate safely even when we’re in disagreement.”

Success that goes beyond statistics

Statistics are inadequate measures of success in social environments like the Community Restorative Justice Center. When asked how she assesses her work, she describes a broad range of markers. “For people who often feel like outcasts, the healing process can be slow and full of stops and starts as they learn the skills of safe communication and behavior and build trust for themselves and others,” she says. “At times, success is concrete—someone damages someone's property and through the restorative process, amends are made, the responsible party feels they’re able to do something good and the harmed party is happy. Good to go.”

But to Susan, the bigger successes are more nuanced and vague. She knows she’s made a real difference when someone is finally able to own what they did and develop empathy for the person they’ve harmed. “When someone shows empathy, they’ve stepped outside of themselves and can really understand how it played out for the other person,” she says. Once they achieve that level of empathy, “they can live in their real emotional self in a regulated way and understand what it means to have healthy emotions.”

“So many folks we work with have been taught to hide their emotions, not feel, or ride the wave of every negative emotion until it’s rage,” Susan says. “So, success can also be someone breaking a cycle—their own cycle, a family cycle, or a relationship cycle. Because they’ve come to a deep understanding that the old cycle is unhealthy, they can step outside of it and go in a different direction.”

One final success Susan mentioned was that “people keep showing up, even when they don’t feel comfortable showing up anywhere else.” According to Susan, it happens a lot at the center, and it is a testament to the safety clients feel there. “Even when they’re feeling upset, scared, anxious, or frustrated, they still come through the door because they know we can hold all of that and they won’t be left to deal with it on their own. They know they can work with us on the thoughts, behaviors, and actions that have caused them stress.”

Moving in with courage is everyone’s job

So what can the average person do to increase safety in their community? Susan says it’s easier than most people think. “Everyone can do it just by reaching out to another person. It really is that simple.” Quoting Brené Brown, Susan said “People are hard to hate close up. Move in.” If you just listen to someone’s story, it takes nothing and it adds value to your life for having heard it. It also opens a door and allows you an opportunity to see if or how you can help your community.” If you see someone is hungry, give them a sandwich so they don’t have to steal,” she says. “It’s rarely about giving money. It’s about simply connecting with another person. You may have to confront your fear,” she adds. But more often than not, you’ll be surprised by how good it feels.”