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I missed posting a video yesterday, so I'm making up for it today. This one-minute vid was posted along with an article at Voice Waves titled "Students and teachers find restorative justice more effective." The piece discusses a student who is upset about something happening in class and requests a restorative circle from the school dean. Most of the circles discussed in the article are responsive, but the video below, featuring restorative justice coordinator Robert Howard, seems to be promoting a more proactive use of restorative justice:

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This is big news from the United Kingdom, where national legislation is being considered to allow restorative justice for victims of adult crime. The Restorative Justice Council in UK sent this news flash out in a recent email:

In plans published today, new legislation for restorative justice with adult offenders and their victims will be introduced through an amendment to the Crime and Courts Bill. This is part of the Government’s response to the Punishment and Reform: effective community sentences consultation.

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Here's from a piece by Ben Byrne in UK's The Guardian. In these first few paragraphs he makes a concise case for Restorative Justice for youth offenders:

Every local authority is grappling with the challenge of increasing demand for services at a time of severe financial constraint. To meet this challenge we will need new partnerships and new relationships with our residents to help us solve local problems.

One way to approach this challenge is to put restorative practice at the heart of a local authority's work. Surrey's restorative story started in youth justice and our impressive results mean we have tried to spread the principle across the work of the county council.

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Morning circle session for 9th graders at Plymouth Education Center in DetroitOn Tuesday, Melinda Clynes wrote an article in Model D, "a web-based magazine creating new narratives for Detroit since 2005," titled "City kids: How proactive restorative practices benefit all." Framing the argument for restorative practices in terms of the failures of No Child Left Behind, Clynes writes:

While national education leaders try to repair the wrongs of public education, plotting their post No Child Left Behind moves, here in Detroit, some folks tout that school reform might better begin with developing and nurturing relationships among students, between students and teachers, and between schools and community.

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Educational Leadership has a piece this month by Larry Ferlazzo "Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do" that rings true on a number of levels.

The list includes:

  • Remember that authoritative beats authoritarian.
  • Believe that everyone can grow.
  • Give positive messages.
  • Apologize (i.e., being willing to admit that as a teacher, you are also human).
  • Be flexible.
  • Set the right climate.

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Brooke Adams of the Salt Lake City Tribune writes:

There are approximately 57 countries that use capital punishment for the most heinous crimes, but only one is a western industrialized nation: The United States.

Capital punishment in the U.S. in the context of state, national and international policies will be the focus of the eighth annual symposium on the death penalty sponsored by Utah Valley University on Thursday. The event will feature such experts as James Acker, a criminal justice professor at State University of New York, Albany, and co-director of the Capital Punishment Research Initiative; Ted Wachtel, founder of the International Institute for Restorative Practices; and Alan Clarke, a UVU professor.

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The Restorative Justice Council in the UK writes: "The UK has opted in to a European Union (EU) Directive establishing the right of victims to safeguards in restorative justice services and recognising the ‘great benefit’ to victims that participation in restorative justice brings. The Restorative Justice Council worked with the European Forum for Restorative Justice to secure changes to the draft Directive, based on the evidence that RJ, delivered well, provides many benefits for victims. The final text of the Directive reflects the benefits of participation in restorative justice and sets out the need for minimum standards to ‘ensure victims have access to safe and competent restorative justice services’."

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This week's Sunday video comes from The National, a program on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). This 3 and a 1/2 minute clip shows how talking circles in a Toronto school are being used to confront the issue of bullying head on.

 

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Here is the International Juvenile Justice Observatory (IJJO) announcement of its conference November 6 & 7 in London, England titled "Criminality or Social Exclusion: Justice for Children in a Divided World":

Even before the ‘credit crunch’ of 2008 and the economic crises of 2011, the globalization of neo-liberal economic and fiscal regimes was generating growing social, economic and cultural polarization.

This has resulted in ever increasing numbers of children, young people and families finding themselves located in areas of concentrated social disadvantage on the margins of society where ethnic minority and migrant people are heavily represented.

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photo by Sarah Rice for EdWeek

EdWeek has published the first in a four-part series of articles by Nirvi Shah called "Rethinking Discipline."

The introduction to the series notes: "Zero-tolerance policies, which require out-of-school suspension or expulsion for certain inappropriate behaviors, have become the go-to disciplinary approach in many schools. But research suggests some downsides: Such punishments may not change students’ behavior and are often meted out unfairly. This article is the first in a four-part series exploring alternative approaches."

In this first piece the focus is on restorative practices. City Springs Elementary School, which has worked closely with IIRP, features prominently in the article, and IIRP trainer Mary Jo Hebling is quoted:

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