In 23 years of service at OAR, I’ve learned many important lessons. The most important is this: You can’t make another person be accountable for their actions.

Years ago, I remember overhearing someone sitting in an OAR Orientation class, inside the jail, wearing a green jumpsuit, and talking to another class member. I didn’t hear the details. But I heard: “Yeah I hit him, and I’d do it again.”.  Clearly jail had not made this person accountable. I’ve seen family members, judges, probation offices, and others try and fail to make people accountable for their actions. These failures occur because we are looking at it wrong.  

When a justice-involved community member starts working with OAR they will be provided with a path to accountability. Step one is defining accountability’s three characteristics:

1)     Admitting what we have done

2)    Acknowledging how our actions have harmed/impacted others

3)  Taking steps to repair that harm

This definition, coaching from OAR, and an assortment of OAR services, can lead an individual to recognize that he (or she) has harmed others and to see that they have a responsibility because of their choices. That responsibility is to those they have harmed, the community, and to themselves. This encourages individuals to invest in themselves, change their behavior, and listen to the needs of the people they have harmed. This doesn't happen because someone else makes them do it. It happens because they develop a personal and internal desire to take responsibility for their choices and to change. Something that incarceration alone rarely produces.

OAR does important work and provides a service that others do not. OAR services are unique and critical for there to be real change in individual lives and the larger community.  You know this. That is why you are an OAR supporter.  Please continue your support with a generous donation this holiday season.   

Sincerely,

Brandon and the OAR Team