Greg Winship spoke for more than 20 minutes before making his big reveal to the luncheon crowd at the Field Club of Omaha.

Winship has been convicted for complicity in a murder. He faced a sentence of 75 years to life.

“I shouldn’t be standing in front of you today,” Winship said. “I was with the wrong person at the wrong time. I didn’t shoot anyone, but I was there, and I didn’t do anything to stop that.”

Winship said restorative justice changed his life. He encouraged the crowd to consider at how it could transform criminal justice.

“What if we did something different?” Winship said. “What if we allowed the person on the witness stand to go hug the person who just shot their brother? I think we will see a lot of different outcomes. They may not be perfect every time. They may not be the Hallmark moment you’re looking for. But my suggestion would be to ask those questions, get rid of the security blanket that we sometimes hold onto that says that we’ve always done it this way and we’ve got to continue doing it this way. Let’s look for alternatives that are proven in other places to work and say we can do a better job.”

Winship presented keynote remarks at the Concord Mediation Center’s annual luncheon for the Pathways Awards. He is a restorative justice strategist with the Center for Conflict Resolution, a nonprofit group in Kansas City.

The Concord Mediation Center presented the Pathway Awards last month. The center is celebrating its 20th anniversary serving Douglas and Sarpy counties.

Retired Douglas County Juvenile Court Judge Douglas Johnson received the Pathways Award. He founded Nebraska’s first Family Drug Treatment Court in 2005, and it was expanded in 2014 to including all families with children from birth to 5 in the Douglas County Juvenile Court. It is now called Impact from Infancy.

Johnson joined the Juvenile Court in 1993 and served as an adjunct professor at the Creighton University School of Law since 1995. He is a past president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and a longtime member of its faculty.

Mary Lee Brock, assistant director of the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution program in Creighton University’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, received the Founders Award. Brock was the founding executing director of the Concord Center.

Brock is recognized by the Nebraska Supreme Court Negotiation and Conflict Resolution program as a lead trainer of mediation and facilitation skills curriculum, and she is also an accomplished practitioner in family mediation, special education mediation, victim offender mediation, family group conferencing, specialized alternative dispute resolution and restorative justice.

Retired Nebraska Supreme Court Office of Dispute Resolution Director Debora Denny received the Ron Volkmer Practitioner Award. Before retiring earlier this year, Denny worked to enhance the use of quality mediation, restorative justice and advanced dispute resolution practices with courts, probation, mediators, tribes and the public.

Denny was a project director for the enhanced juvenile restorative justice pilot project, the comprehensive parenting act custody research, parenting plan mediation, child welfare conferences and access to justice for self-represented litigants. She also served as adjunct faculty at the Creighton University School of Law and as a member of National Association for Community Mediation Executive Board.

For more information on the Concord Mediation Center, visit concordmediationcenter.com.