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Earlier this year Eigen Kracht, a non-governmental social service agency in Amsterdam, Netherlands, conducted its 1000th family group conference (known as family group decision making in the US). By the time eForum got in touch with Eigen Kracht’s founder and director Rob van Pagée in September 2007 that number had already reached 1200.

“The pace is accelerating,” said van Pagée. “When we started in 2001 we trained 14 independent coordinators and two teams of facilitators but had no conferences. It took five months to get the first conference. Everybody said, ‘This is a great idea... but not for my clients.’”

Van Pagée started his career as a social worker dealing with child abuse cases, so he understands the system. “I had to go to the mother and kids and the father (who might be drunk or absent), speak to the school and the home physician (never neighbors, because of privacy issues). I returned to my supervisor and said, ‘This is what’s happening. I think we should do this and that.’ This is how decisions are made. Then you go back to the family and say, ‘This is the plan.’”

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After a preamble acknowledging those in attendance and acceptance of his new responsibilities as president, Wachtel began his speech.

Thirty years ago my wife Susan and I, both public school teachers, were looking for solutions to the increasingly challenging behavior of young people in schools, families and communities. We left public education, founded the first of several non-profit organizations and developed schools, group homes and other programs for delinquent and at-risk youth. As time went on we realized that the successful strategies we were using with the troubled young people in our programs had implications for all young people, and for adults as well.

We and our colleagues also got involved with an innovative approach in the field of criminal justice, called “restorative justice,” which provides opportunities for victims, offenders, and their family and friends, to meet and, to the extent possible, repair the harm caused by a crime. This development in criminal justice, giving people an opportunity to express their feelings and ideas and have a say in resolving the conflict, matched parallel developments in other fields.

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Alyssa (not her real name), 18, made some unfortunate choices over the last few years, some with legal consequences. But her situation improved recently, thanks to a Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) conference facilitated by the Community Service Foundation (CSF) in Pennsylvania, USA, one of the IIRP’s demonstration programs. By involving Alyssa’s family and friends and tapping into their collective feelings of responsibility and concern, FGDM encouraged her to commit to positive changes in her life.

On probation and unable to function in school, Alyssa was in and out of alternative programs, youth detention facilities and group homes.

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Lorenn Walker, Kat Brady and Ted Sakai speak about An unusual program developed in Hawaii is helping inmates learn new skills, reconnect with their loved ones and prepare for life outside the prison walls.

The Restorative Circle Project, which began at Waiawa Correctional Facility on the island of O’ahu, brings inmates together with the people they have wronged to find ways to repair the harm, explore forgiveness and make plans for their transition back into the community.

The project is one of two restorative justice prison initiatives launched by Lorenn Walker of Hawaii Friends of Civic and Law Related Education. In addition to the Restorative Circle project, Walker also offers the inmates restorative justice facilitator training, a 12-week program that teaches communication and conflict resolution skills.

“I’m on a mission to help transform the justice system and make it healthy and healing,” said Walker, a public health educator and former trial lawyer who has worked in many aspects of the legal system, from family court to representing the Hawaii state prison system as deputy attorney general.

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Joseph Roy, former principal of Springfield Township High School, now Springfield Township superindendent, in PA, USA, utilizies restorative practices to build a positive school community. 

A report issued by the American Psychological Association (APA) at their summer 2006 annual meeting found that zero tolerance policies in use throughout U.S. school districts have not been effective in reducing violence
or promoting learning in school. The report called for a change in these policies and indicated a need for alternatives, including restorative practices such as restorative justice conferences.

The report was written by an APA task force, led by Cecil R. Reynolds, Ph.D., of Texas A&M University, which was charged with reviewing the effectiveness of zero tolerance policies in American schools. In essence, the report found that “zero tolerance has not been shown to improve school climate or school safety.”

Although it seems intuitive that removing disruptive students from schools will improve the school experience for others and that severe punishment will improve the behavior of both the punished and those who witness the punishment, the task force report asserts that the available evidence “consistently flies in the face of these beliefs.”

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The Scottish Executive (government) released this report, an evaluation of two years of implementation of restorative practices in 18 schools in three local authorities. The report states that restorative practices "can offer a powerful and effective approach to promoting harmonious relationships in school and to the successful resolution of conflict and harm."

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In 2002, Community Service Foundation and Buxmont Academy (CSF Buxmont) began redefining the way its Individual Service Plans (ISPs) were handled at their eight alternative schools, 16 foster group homes and supervision and counseling programs for struggling youth, located throughout southeastern Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare (DPW) mandates that an ISP be developed for every youth referred to CSF or any similar program, upon entry. DPW regulations require that the most pressing issues for each youth be identified. These issues serve as the focus of a youth’s Individual Service Plan for the first six months of his or her time in the program.

Until this point, ISPs were developed with the best of intentions by CSF staff for young people entering their program, but the young people and their family members were not involved in defining the concerns that would determine the direction of the youths’ initial service plans.

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Participants at the Restorative Justice Training, at Northern Caribbean University, in Mandeville, JamaicaJamaica is a beautiful country, but it is deeply troubled by poverty and violence. “Anyone who has followed Jamaica over the past 10 to 20 years can see our country has suffered from the loss of communal relationships that once existed. The issue of crime and violence is dominant at present,” noted Dr. Teran Milford, dean of the College of Teacher Education and Behavioural Sciences at Northern Caribbean University (NCU), in Mandeville. “One way to rebuild structures and rebuild relationships is through restorative justice,” he added. “Rather than just punishing a perpetrator of crime, we want to find ways to reinstate the perpetrator back in the community.”

This core principle of restorative justice (RJ), along with its focus on repairing the harm done to people and empowering those affected by crime, has found a ready recipient in Jamaica, where the government is now engaged in a program to promote the use of RJ throughout many areas of society to redress past harms and begin making enduring changes in the culture.

RJ was mandated by the Jamaican government in response to violent conflicts in 2001 between police and citizens in inner-city areas, on the recommendation of Jennifer Llewelyn, of Dalhousie Law School, Nova Scotia, an expert witness on restorative justice for the 2002 Jamaican Commission of Enquiry.

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As an increasing number of schools worldwide adopt restorative practices as a means of dealing with discipline and improving school culture, school leaders are beginning to analyze the impact of restorative methods. The numbers tell a powerful story: Schools implementing restorative methods have seen a drop in disciplinary problems, decreased reliance on detention and suspension, and an improvement in student attitudes. Gathering such data is important, both for evaluating the effectiveness of restorative methods and garnering funding support for restorative programs.

(Instead of zero tolerance and authoritarian punishment, restorative practices provides high levels of both control and support to encourage appropriate behavior, and places responsibility on students themselves, using a collaborative response to wrongdoing. The philosophy underlying these practices holds that human beings are happier, more productive, and more likely to make positive changes in their behavior when those in positions of authority do things WITH them, rather than TO them or FOR them.)

So far, much significant research on restorative practices in schools has consisted of qualitative studies. (See Part 1 of this article.) “We’ve shown in case study after case study that schools that adopt this approach report significant changes in their cultures,” said Dr. Paul McCold, researcher and founding faculty member of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) graduate school. “What’s needed now is solid quantitative research.” Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are valuable, he noted, as qualitative studies can help to explain quantitative findings.

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Dr. Lawrence W. Sherman and Dr. Heather Strang, both longtime researchers on the effectiveness of restorative justice (RJ), have recently published a major new study titled “Restorative Justice: The Evidence.” Published in the UK, carried out by the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and sponsored by the Smith Institute, an independent think tank based in London, the study concludes that RJ—no matter how it is measured—is as or more effective than traditional methods of criminal justice (CJ) for reducing crime with respect to nearly every group of offender studied.

“There is far more evidence on RJ, with more positive results, than there has been for most innovations in criminal justice.”

—From “Restorative Justice: The Evidence”

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