Community Outreach Efforts
What is the Community Accountability and Reintegration Board (CARB)?
Answers
What is the Community Accountability and Reintegration Board (CARB)?
The CARB represents the larger community in holding the responsible person accountable for both his or her actions and the requirements of the Redress Plan. The CARB also works to reintegrate the responsible person into the community. RESTORE uses local contacts and a screening process to select members of the public for the CARB.
Reintegration occurs after the responsible person has completed their Redress Agreement. The Community Accountability and Re-Integration Board convenes a formal meeting at the end of program participation, to which anyone who attended the conference is invited. The purpose of the meeting is to acknowledge the wrong that was done by the responsible person, describe the tasks that have been accomplished to make amends for the wrongdoing, and to provide an opportunity for the person to express genuine remorse. Only at this point has the responsible person earned the right to sincerely apologize to the survivor. To signify the end of the program, the Community Accountability and Reintegration Board formally acknowledges that the responsible person is again a member of the law-abiding community and can function as a member of society without carrying the stigma of a criminal record of a sex offense conviction.
At program exit when the CARB holds a public meeting to reintegrate the responsible person, is the meeting truly open to the public in the sense that anybody can come? How is it announced and how is the meeting made known?
The meeting involves representatives of the community including the members of the accountability board and any family and friends who attended the conference and wish to be present. The survivor is notified and invited by RESTORE case managers to attend anytime that his/her responsible person is on the agenda for a meeting. Other community members may request to be present, but they must make arrangements in advance so that staff can avoid an audience size that would overwhelm the proceedings. The meetings are not announced to the general public; however, the RESTORE website announces that the conferences and CARB board meetings may be observed and indicates how to make arrangements.
Is the language for the offender assessment tools inclusive of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) population?
All assessment tools and program forms used by RESTORE are written in gender-neutral language to encompass both same sex and opposite sex crimes and avoid relationship language that is heterosexist.
