Josef Lavanway began working with South Burlington’s Community Justice Center in 2016, volunteering for several years before becoming a paid employee and, eventually, the center’s director.

There, he saw firsthand the benefits of pre-charge diversion, a type of restorative justice practice that has a rich history in Chittenden County, but is lacking or nonexistent elsewhere in the state.

Restorative justice work is widespread throughout Vermont, and many organizations provide post-charge or post-conviction restorative work while a person is proceeding through the court system or after a person has been convicted of a crime.

Pre-charge diversion, however, takes low-level crimes — a retail theft or vandalism, for example — and instead of sending them to the court system, refers the cases to restorative justice panels that are moderated by local volunteers and employees like Lavanway. 

There, victims of these crimes meet the person who committed them, and are given the opportunity to speak directly to the perpetrator about how the crime affected them.

“For somebody who has caused harm to be able to hear how they’ve harmed somebody directly, and the closure for affected parties and responsible parties, is just something that is incredibly powerful,” Lavanway said, speaking about restorative justice practices generally.

Pre-charge diversion has worked for many years in Chittenden County, where every year law enforcement officers send hundreds of low-level crimes to one of the county’s four community justice centers in Burlington, South Burlington, Essex and Williston — cases that would otherwise exacerbate a backlogged judicial system.

Moderators of pre-charge diversion have lauded its benefits to both those involved and their communities at-large. Although pre-charge diversion is open to all offenders, research has shown that for first-time offenders especially it can make a big difference. The recidivism rate of first-time offenders who go through pre-charge diversion is significantly lower than first-time offenders who go through the court system.

Act 180, a law passed last year, moved to expand pre-charge diversion work statewide. It codified pre-charge diversion into law, setting guidelines for police departments and state’s attorneys to rely on, and moved the administration of funding from the Department of Corrections to the Attorney General’s Office.

But to streamline costs and regionalize the system, the Attorney General’s Office has indicated it will fund pre-charge diversion for only one entity per county beginning in July 2026.

The Attorney General’s Office will exclusively fund Burlington’s Community Justice Center, which will be responsible for handling referrals for the entire county.

That directive has left Lavanway and others in uncertainty. While some counties would be receiving funding for pre-charge diversion for the first time, town officials in Williston, Essex and South Burlington have in correspondence expressed hesitation over the move to consolidate the practice to Burlington.

In South Burlington, City Manager Jessie Baker said in an interview the directive would potentially “eliminate” the city’s local Community Justice Center.

Town officials in Burlington and the three municipalities have this month jumpstarted conversations about what the practice will look like in the coming year.

“One of the challenges locally is that these are South Burlington employees who do exceptional work and are being told that their positions won’t exist,” Baker said. “There’s a possibility that Burlington will likely need additional staff to provide services in our communities. These folks are already experts in the service provision. There may be opportunities for them to find employment with the City of Burlington in the future.”

Hyper-local

Before taking office in 2021, Rep. Karen Dolan, D-Essex, worked in Essex’s Community Justice Center and witnessed up close the impact of pre-charge diversion work.

“If you’re able to address crimes, poor decisions — whatever you want to call the acts — in the moment or close to the moment, have folks take accountability, reflect on the harm they caused and come up with plans to make sure it doesn’t happen again, you could see some real change,” she said in an interview.

But when she was elected, she quickly learned how different access to pre-charge diversion work is across county lines. A criminal case in Franklin County’s Fairfax could have a very different trajectory through the state’s criminal justice system than a crime committed in Chittenden County’s Milton, for example.

“It was just not consistent around the state. There also wasn’t a consistent definition of what pre-charge referrals were, and so it was hard to even evaluate data on it,” she said in an interview. “So, part of what Act 180 does is just make that consistent: This is what a pre-charge referral is, these are the data sets that we’re looking for, so we really have a kind of road map to look at and also compare data going forward.”

The new law will expand pre-charge work in areas like Lamoille County, which provides other types of restorative justice work but has had no funding for pre-charge work.

Heather Hobart, the executive director of Lamoille Restorative Center, said in an interview that she’s had to turn down requests made by police chiefs and Lamoille County State’s Attorney Aliena Gerhard to divert crimes away from the court system and to restorative justice panels.

“What’s keeping us from doing that is only money, which is in staffing resources, really,” she said. “And that’s been a hard thing to talk about. When I have police that see the benefit of the court diversion program and they want a solution … I’d like to be able to offer that, and it’s just a matter of funding. It is a parity issue.”

Dolan and other lawmakers like South Burlington Democratic Rep. Martin Lalonde spearheaded Act 180 during last year’s legislative session to create regional equity.

The law established baseline standards for county prosecutors to follow when deciding whether someone who commits a relatively minor crime should be referred to a pre-charge restorative justice program in their community, instead of being charged in court.

But the legislation did not include funding to support the attorney general’s work. Citing the lack of funding, Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the law, but lawmakers in June voted to override the governor’s veto.

How much funding the Attorney General’s Office will get for the pre-charge diversion remains to be seen. The fiscal year 2026 budget the House passed last month allocates $1.1 million to the Attorney General’s Office. But that will still need approval from the Senate and, eventually, the governor’s signature.

Still, the transition is already in full swing. Willa Farrell, the court diversion and pretrial services director with the Attorney General’s Office, has been in communication with county officials to begin the process of administering the service statewide.

That includes creating a regional structure in counties where more than one entity is doing pre-charge work, she said, with an emphasis on keeping the service delivery local.

“Service delivery and how people use services is what should be happening locally in communities,” Farrell said in an interview. “But, who’s paying the health insurance bill, or where the staff person gets their supervision — to me, that can happen in a centrally located part of a county.”

That conversation has proved “challenging” in Chittenden County, Farrell wrote in an April 1 update to the Legislature, which has long had a “robust” availability of pre-charge services in multiple towns.

Law enforcement refers more than 400 pre-charge cases annually to Chittenden County’s four community justice centers, compared to less than 50 in areas like Washington or Windham county, according to data from the Attorney General’s Office.

What’s made the services so successful is the hyper-local connections the centers and their volunteers have with the communities, town officials say.

“The volunteers are coming from our communities that we’re working directly with. … I think that is a big part of the success, in just having those relationships that have been built up over time,” said Greg Duggan, Essex’s town manager.

In Richmond, which is serviced by Williston’s Community Justice Center, residents and officials there have expressed concern about the shift toward a regional model.

Jay Furr, a selectboard member in Richmond, has said in public meetings and in an interview he is worried the hyper-local element that community justice centers provide would get lost in a regionally administered structure out of Burlington.

“In Richmond, we have seen bold new initiatives that are supposed to help the whole county wind up being mostly about Burlington,” he said. “When you consider that the volunteers who handled cases, and the staff handle cases, know the community, and in many cases, know the people, know what solutions were appropriate for our area, and you take that knowledge away and you turn it over to a staff based out of Burlington — some people don’t even know where Richmond is.”

‘Rich history’

In January, town managers and law enforcement officials in South Burlington, Essex, Colchester, Shelburne, Williston and Richmond signed an open letter to the Attorney General’s Office calling into question the decision to shift funding to Burlington.

South Burlington, Essex and Williston’s centers provided a plethora of successful practices, they wrote, and spearheaded the historical development of pre-charge restorative justice work now being expanded statewide.

“To now take these impactful services away from our local communities for the sake of administrative efficiency feels like we are being punished for our success,” the letter reads. “How can we continue to modernize and advance how we provide public safety services, if critical tools are taken away from us?”

The officials requested that the Attorney General’s Office fund all four centers — or at least two. But the Attorney General’s Office maintained its commitment to fund one entity.

Eventually, the town officials ceded. Baker, South Burlington’s town manager, said the city was “not necessarily interested in fighting against that team.”

The Attorney General’s Office, to give towns time to coordinate the shift, said funding for the four centers will remain in place through the end of fiscal year 2026. The funding shift to Burlington will begin in July 2026, Farrell said.

The initial hesitation, however, has since been allayed by commitments to keep the service local to communities while administering it out to communities.

Erin Jacobsen, Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak’s chief of staff, in an email to town officials said the city was “confident that we can come up with paths forward that work for all of our localities.”

“Whatever comes next, we very much want this to be a true partnership, where, rather than removing any services your towns have so successfully offered for so many years, we can build on the successes we’ve experienced and leverage some of our resources for the benefit of the county as a whole,” she wrote.

Rachel Jolly, the assistant director with the city’s Community and Economic Development Office, which houses the Queen City’s Community Justice Center, said that the county’s “rich history” of pre-charge work gives them an advantage in crafting a regional system.

“There’s a large body of police support for restorative justice and for the work, and so we just want to build on that,” she said.

Town managers, in interviews with VTDigger, have noted that maintaining local presence in communities and committing to a regionalized structure can go hand in hand.

“I don’t think those two things are necessarily in conflict with one another,” Baker said. “I think you can administer something centrally and still have embedded service delivery in the community.”

Erik Wells, Williston’s town manager, said in an interview, “That’s going to be achieved by having staff available in police departments, and it’s going to really continue to rely on a good, strong volunteer base.”

Jacobsen said it’s too early in the process to say what the administrative structure will look like in Burlington. But she and Jolly in an interview said they remain committed to keeping volunteers embedded in local communities.

“That’s not something that we want to see diminished in any way, shape or form,” she said.

Jacobsen and Jolly hope to schedule a meeting with other stakeholders later this month. Meanwhile, Lavanway and other staff and volunteers continue to work their cases.

“We’re just going to continue to do what we do and we’ll see where things land,” Lavanway said.

Correction: This story was updated to accurately reflect the date the Attorney General’s Office will begin to fund pre-charge diversion for only one entity per county.