When Yazmin Ortiz came inside from cross-country practice last fall, she saw an open locker. Inside was a pricey designer backpack that one of her classmates owned.
“There was nobody [around] and I saw her bag,” says the Reedley High School senior. “I don’t know what I was thinking that made me turn around to grab her backpack.”
Yazmin kept it at home for months. Then, at the beginning of January, she wore it to school. The owner called her out. Soon they were both in the office.
Yazmin knew she was going to get in trouble, but she just wanted a way out. “I just started denying everything,” she says.
But finally, Yazmin told her parents what she had done. She felt guilty because her parents had worked hard to make her life better than theirs. They didn’t even get to finish middle school back in Mexico.
Yazmin agreed to return the backpack. The other kid’s mother wanted to press charges. But Yazmin got lucky; the girl chose restorative justice.
I had to sit in a conference room with her parents and my parents,” says Yazmin. “And sitting in there was, it was very difficult. I couldn’t even look them in the eye because I felt really ashamed of what I did.”
Accountability is a key part of restorative justice, a process where the offender apologizes to the victim through mediation. Yazmin not only had to admit she took the backpack, but she also had to repeat out loud the other girl’s version of the story. That’s a key part of the process, to make sure the victim is heard.
She also had to do 30 hours of community service. Her job? Volunteering at a local thrift store run by the Mennonites. It wasn’t a random assignment. The whole restorative justice program started in the Fresno County town because of a global relief organization there, the West Coast Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).
Listen or read the full story from KQED's California Report HERE
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