Justice

Bill sponsor, Roger GoodmanOn March 30, 2012 Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire signed into law legislation that makes restorative justice available to youth offenders. The bill, co-sponsored by state Reps. Roger Goodman and Ruth Kagi passed unanimously in both the house and the

Mark Finnis, of Hull Centre for Restorative Practice, an IIRP affiliateAccording to the netnewsledger.com, on March 26, 2012, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada hosted:

...a conference on restorative practices [that] brought together community leaders from education, enforcement, health, justice and youth services. Participants learned about what it means to be restorative and how to build a positive culture in our

Jo Berry, from Lisa Rea interview at Restorative Justice OnlineJean Schmitz, director of IIRP Latin America, sent me a link to this piece he found at RJOnline (originally posted last May). It's a lengthy interview by Lisa Rea of Jo Berry, the daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, a member of parliament in the Thatcher government, who was one of five people killed by IRA bomber Patrick

This Saturday, April 1, 2012, will see a world-first event, bringing a corporate CEO face to face with the victims of their crimes against the Earth through restorative justice. 

The two fictional CEOs, Robin Bannerman and John Tench, who were found guilty of committing ecocide last year in the UK Supreme Court will be sentenced, in a process involving top experts, including Lawrence Kershen QC, chair of the Restorative Justice Council.

This is a trial run for a new offense of ecocide (much like genocide, but against the Earth and its resources) ahead of trying to get the UN to adopt the offense internationally. You can watch this event free online, Saturday April 1 at 10:30 a.m. U.K. time....

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Illustration of the CenterI've been saving this news for a rainy day, and here it is. This article, "Tribal Justice Center First of Its Kind" by Lisa Kopochinski for Correctional News last September discusses the process the Department of Indian Affairs used to work with Oglala Sioux tribal leaders to develop a new justice and public safety complex on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Architects and builders are

Miguel Tello, director of IIRP Central America, appeared on a radio podcast - This Is Wisdom - based, I believe in Canada.  Miguel is very articulate and talks about his own restorative journey, hitting on many key players who influenced his work and thinking. To hear the 30-minute program, click here.

The IIRP eForum provides short, hopeful emails that include brief summaries and links to significant articles, research reports and other information about the growing field of restorative practices. On February 24 the eForum posted this book review, "Commitments to Reconciliation: A Review of Reconciliation and Architectures of Commitment: Sequencing Peace in Bougainville" by IIRP professor and founding faculty member Frida Rundell. Rundell reviews book 2 of 3 published to date by the Peacebuilding Compared Project (http://peacebuilding.anu.edu.au) of the Centre for International Governance &

Here's a truly lovely video of restorative justice pioneer Mark Yantzi of Canada speaking about the inspiration for some of the first victim-offender meetings as a way of resolving a series of crimes - the notorious Elmira case. Yantzi is director of Community Justice Initiatives.

I love Yantzi saying at the very end of this 8-minute talk, "Crime is something that harms people, but if in the addressing of crime we can make things better for everyone, we've really been restorative in what we do."

photo by AlecSchueler at Flickr Creative CommonsAn article from the Irish Times discusses the use of restorative justice as one solution to making an impact in terms of dealing with anti-social behavior, and criticizes the use of prisons and the negative impact they can have on offenders.

The lord mayor [of Dublin, Ireland said] there must be “consequences” for how

Aboriginal Children in a Canadian Residential SchoolFrom the 1870s to the 1990s, more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families and placed in government-funded, church-run Residential Schools. Aboriginal children were punished for speaking their own language or following traditional cultural practices and suffered emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse; some died. Their unresolved trauma, passed from generation to generation, has had a profoundly negative effect on

Have you read this book? Leave a comment below.

Introduction

Reconciliation and Architectures of Commitment: Sequencing Peace in Bougainville, published September 2010, is a publication of the Peacebuilding Compared Project (http://peacebuilding.anu.edu.au) of the Centre for International Governance & Justice (CICJ) of the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra. The book is the second of three published so far. The first, Anomie and Violence: Non-truth and Reconciliation in Indonesian Peacebuilding, was published in March 2010; the third, Pillars and Shadows: Statebuilding as Peacebuilding in Solomon Islands, was published in November 2010. Links to free downloads of all three books are available at: ...

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Coos Bay Bridge. Photo by Too Far North (Karyn Christner) via Flickr Creative CommonsHere's a story about a restorative justice program embedded in the court system on a tribal reservation in Oregon.

[The] system is known as the Peacegiving Court. [Judge Donald] Costello was part of a team that invented it in Deschutes County, and now it's part of the judicial systems for both the Coquille Indian Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and

Representatives from the Flanker Peace and Justice Centre in Montego BayHere are links to two more articles from Jamaica regarding Restorative Justice Week (Feb. 5 - 11, 2012).

The first – Gov't Committed to Achieving Safe and Harmonious Society – includes photos from the opening of Granville Restorative Justice Centre, one of four new neighborhood centers that opened last

In this piece, "Less Prison, better prevention of crime,"Australian criminologist John Braithwaite argues that the evidence shows in so many areas that restorative rather than punitive responses, and also evidence-based responses to preventing crime, provide a better return on government investment by reducing crime and serving the needs of victims.

Braithwaite discusses prisons, policing, restorative justice, remorse, forgiveness, anti-bullying programs, fraudulent shifting of corporate profits to off shore tax havens and the US housing crisis in this terse and powerful

MEREPS – Mediation and Restorative Justice in Prison Settings – was a three-year project funded by the EU.  According to the now freely available PDF Handbook on Using Restorative Justice in Prisons, "The primary objective of the MEREPS project is to identify ways to apply mediation and restorative practices in prison settings, with special regard to providing support to victims and enabling offenders to take responsibility. It also aims to facilitate the resolution of conflicts resulting from a crime between the victim and the offender, and the offender and their environment, including other inmates, with a view to facilitating the reintegration of offenders following their release."

This project involved

(From left) Justice Minister Mark Golding, Chief Justice Zaila McCalla, and Robert Rainford, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Justice, share a light moment prior to Thursday’s launch of Restorative Justice Week at the ministry in Kingston. (Photo: Lionel Rookwood)This week – February 5 through 11 – Jamaica once again celebrates Restorative Justice Week on the theme of "One People, One Spirit, One Justice." This is the 5th year Jamaica has hosted such a

Susan Miller, professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, has received the Outstanding Book Award from the American Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences for her 2011 book, After the Crime: The Power of Restorative Justice Dialogues Between Victims and Violent Offenders.

Martin Wright reviewed the book last summer at Restorative Justice Online writing:

"Violence, rape, murder

"We must also propose new ways of life... that means shifting from a punitive mindset to a restorative one."

I'm working on a new eForum article about a program called FaithCARE which applies restorative practices to faith communities and congregations. I've recently had the opportunity to interview Mark Vander Vennen of Shalem Mental Health Network in Ontario, Canada about this project and to talk to Bruce Schenk of IIRP Canada again, who partners with Shalem and has been very active in developing the program.

So it was pleasant to see this piece by Mark which discusses the need for restorative responses in light of a "tough-on-crime" law currently moving its way through the Canadian legislature. I'm reposting the article below, but the original piece can be found in Northumberland Today by clicking ...

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As a followup to Wednesday's post about the upcoming student-led initiative  in Philadelphia - "End Violence Through Restorative Justice" - organized by The Campaign for Nonviolent Schools on Martin Luther King Day January 16, here is a video that recaps last October's Week of Action Against School Pushout. This video highlights how students and members of the community across the country are increasingly speaking out to promote positive alternatives to zero-tolerance policies, including restorative practices. The first three minutes features many youth voices speaking about their experiences. At minute 6:15 mention is made of The Campaign for Nonviolent Schools' Youth Speakout Against Pushout which happened in Philadelphia that week.

"Throughout the week of October 1-8, 2011, thousands of parents, youth, and educators took part in student-led actions and events in 28 cities to expose the school pushout crisis in our nation

Here's a post written by Sylvia Clute on her Genuine Justice blogand based on a workshop she attended at IIRP's 14th Conference in Nova Scotia last summer. The workshop was given by Susannah Sheffer and Walter Long, who both advocate for abolishing the death penalty. Sylvia has written about several talks given at the conference, which she has given me permission to re-post. I begin with this one because of a personal connection:

I met Susannah Sheffer the other month when I began a new part-time job at North Star Self-Directed Learning for Teens,