Trustees:

Helen Bowen and Jim Boyack, Criminal Barristers

Helen and Jim are practicing criminal lawyers. Both graduated from Otago University Law School in 1979 and 1980.

Helen was appointed a Youth Advocate in 1989, a lawyer entitled by the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act 1989 (the act) to act for young persons ages 14 to 17 in the Youth Court. (Jim has joined her at this restorative bar.)

Every young person who admits or is convicted of a criminal offence in the Youth Court is required by the act to attend a Family Group Conference (FGC), a facilitated restorative meeting of at least the offender and this young person’s extended family, the victim or representative of the victim’s views, a police youth aid officer and the Youth Advocate.

Helen’s 5-year-experience of Youth Justice, in 1994, led her, and then Jim, to encourage their criminal clients to participate in ground-breaking restorative justice conferences, modeled on the FGC, facilitated by community volunteers. Helen and Jim themselves began to volunteer as facilitators in 1995, while continuing to practice a new type of law informed by restorative values.

After training facilitators for the government Court-referred RJ pilot in 2001 (see home page), Helen and Jim have accepted RJ training work around New Zealand, and overseas with the Thames Valley police, in Northern Ireland, England, the Bahamas and in Italy.

Both have spoken at New Zealand and international RJ symposia and Bar Association meetings from their unique perspective as criminal lawyers who advocate restorative solutions to the crime problem.

Helen is the co-author with Father Jim Consedine of “Restorative Justice—Contemporary Themes and Practice” (Ploughshares Publications, Lyttleton, New Zealand, 1999), and with Jim Boyack and Chris Marshall co-authored “How Does Restorative Justice Ensure Good Practice?” in “Critical Issues in Restorative Justice” (edited by Howard Zehr and Barbara Toews, Criminal Justice Press, Monsey, New York and Willan Publishing, Collompton, Devon, UK, 2004).

In recent years Helen and Jim have advised on extending the RJ conference process into schools, the workplace (accidents involving injury or death, and employment disputes), and this year they have consulted in Great Britain with agencies interested in the use of RJ processes in prisons.