Justice

Kate Shapero, in front of the IIRP Graduate School, Bethlehem, Pa., campus

Kate Shapero is pursuing her Master of Restorative Practices and Education at the IIRP Graduate School. She is a facilitator at the Penn Literacy Network at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and is a curriculum consultant and substitute teacher (formerly a full-time science teacher) at Project Learn School, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The following are her reflections on the restorative conference facilitator’s

Family group decision making (FGDM), known in New Zealand, the UK and Europe as family group conferencing or FGC, is proving to be a beneficial restorative practice to help reintegrate prison inmates back into society. This article addresses restorative FGDM/FGC programs in prisons in Adams County, Pennsylvania, USA, and in Hungary.

Beginning in New Zealand in 1989 in the youth justice and child welfare systems, FGDM/FGC operates according to the premise that the direct involvement of a family group works better to solve a family’s issues than the efforts of professionals alone to solve those issues for people. A key ingredient of an FGDM meeting is “Family Alone Time,” when the family group is left alone, without professionals in the room, to devise plans to solve their own issues. These plans are then evaluated by professionals for legal and safety concerns.

The IIRP’s Second Class of Master’s Degree Recipients: Front Row, left to right: Marie-Isabelle Pautz, Mary-Lynn LaSalivia-Keyte. Second row: Viola Bush, Mary Ellen Mannix, Perrine M. Weierbach, Deanna L. Webb, Jennifer Lyn Barvitskie, Gloria Alvarez Pouleson. Back row: Nicole A. Sutterby, Benjamin Emery, Kevin W. Eisenhart, Lemi Daba Gudeta, Bonnie L. Witt. (Not pictured: Darian Smith.)The second commencement of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) Graduate School, on June 20, 2009, was special because of the 14 graduates. Five received the Master of Restorative Practices and Education: Kevin

Police in roughly 50 percent of counties in England and Wales employ some form of restorative justice (RJ). Constables in districts including Dorset (southwest), Cheshire and Lancashire (northwest), Hull (northeast) and Norfolk (east) are actively making restorative practices (RP) their first line of defense — at officers’ discretion — for dealing with neighborhood disputes, first-time and low-level youth offenders, youth crime in schools, and some adult cases.

The movement toward RP is partly a reaction to national policy targets emphasizing “sanction detection,” which increased the number of crimes prosecuted. As a consequence, prisons became overcrowded and the number of youth brought into the criminal justice system for the first time nearly doubled, many for crimes that formerly would have been dealt with by schools, parents, the community or the neighborhood “bobby.”

John Bailie is assistant director of training and consulting at the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, and a lecturer at the IIRP Graduate School. The following are excerpts from his paper presented at the First International Restorative Justice Conference: Humanizing the Approach to Criminal Justice, in Oaxaca, México, September 23-26, 2008.

“Power” can be defined as the ability to exert influence over one’s environment and play an active role in the decisions that affect one most. Healthy communities set external boundaries while fostering inner control and social discipline.

Restorative practices provide participatory processes that determine social power and promote healthy self-discipline and social discipline. Restorative practices greatly broaden the scope of restorative justice by offering a unifying model that

In 2004 the Brazilian Ministry of Justice received a small UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) grant to launch the country’s first official restorative justice (RJ) pilot projects. Recognizing the unique social context of urban violence in Brazil, the projects brought together school administrators, judges, court workers, prison authorities, social service agencies and local community leaders to create a broad restorative response to the most challenging breakdowns in community safety. While justly known for their creative celebration of life, Brazilians also live with glaring wealth imbalances and the normalization of violence: Murder is the principle cause of death for people under 25.

In Rio de Janeiro, 20 percent of the population lives in crowded favela shantytowns — improvised communities of cramped, shoddy, multi-story houses. Drug gangs are the city’s

Hull, UK, led by the Hull Centre for Restorative Practices (HCRP) and the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), is endeavoring to become a “restorative city.” The goal is for everyone who works with children and youth in Hull, one of England’s most economically and socially deprived cities, to employ restorative practices.

Nigel Richardson, Hull’s director of Children and Young People’s Services, is leading the restorative initiative. Hull- — population 250,000, with 57,000 children — had a thriving fishing industry that disappeared several generations ago, and the city failed to regenerate itself economically, said Richardson, resulting in “low aspirations and self-esteem, and a high proportion of people living below the poverty line.” Hull invested heavily to rebuild housing, the city center and secondary schools. But, said Richardson, “There’s no point in

In July 2008 criminologists at the University of Sheffield, UK, issued their fourth and final report on a major research initiative launched in 2001 by the British Home Office to examine the effects of restorative justice (RJ) for adults and youth. The report marks the culmination of more than seven years of planning and work involving the collaboration of government, academia, social service agencies, and police and criminal justice institutions, including probation, courts and prisons.

(The University of Sheffield has also published three previous reports on different aspects of these research studies: Implementing restorative justice schemes, 2004, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/rdsolr3204.pdf; Restorative justice in practice, 2006, ...

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Terry O’Connell, director of Real Justice Australia, a division of the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), was awarded an honorary doctorate by Australian Catholic University at its October 2008 graduation ceremony. O’Connell, a retired 30-year veteran with the New South Wales Police Service, is well known as the “cop from Wagga Wagga” who developed what is now the IIRP’s Real Justice restorative conference model.

IIRP president Ted Wachtel first heard O’Connell speak in 1994 in Pennsylvania, and was so taken with O’Connell’s work adapting the New Zealand model of family group conferencing that he founded Real Justice, now the IIRP’s restorative justice program. The IIRP has promoted the use of O’Connell’s restorative conference process based on his “restorative questions,” which foster empathy and shared understanding among offenders, victims, and their respective friends and family members.

Since retiring from the police

Youth participate in a restorative circle at Lookout Mountain Youth Services Center, in Golden, Colorado, U.S.A.

It’s no accident that Colorado is the first U.S. state to mandate that judges advise adjudicated youth of the possibility of participating in restorative justice (RJ) conferences or other programs if they become involved in the criminal justice system. (See Part 1 of this article to learn more about Colorado House Bill 08-1117, which legislated this mandate.) For more than 10 years, Colorado communities, schools, nonprofits, RJ

(L-R) Colorado youth RJ bill author Pete Lee, Governor Bill Ritter, Representative Michael Merrifield and Senator John Morse, at the bill-signing ceremony

On March 31, 2008, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed into law House Bill 08-1117, which authorizes the use of restorative justice (RJ) in the state’s Children’s Code and gives Colorado the legislative edge among states that sanction the use of RJ. The bill passed 63-1 in the House and 33-0 in the Senate.

Upon signing the bill, Governor Ritter said, “By making juvenile offenders take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, we can teach them that

A plenary speech on day one of the conference, photography by Dávid VadóczBorbála Fellegi is a Ph.D. researcher at Eötvös Loránd (ELTE) University, Budapest, Hungary, in the field of social policy and criminology, with a special focus on the potential of restorative justice in criminal matters. She authored this report after attending the 10th IIRP International Conference.

“Participation, responsibility-taking, communication, community, caring, restoration, understanding, acceptance” –these concepts were the focus of the three-day long conference organized by the International Institute for Restorative Practices in cooperation with the Community Service

A family and community group conference (FCGC) in Thailand.For Thailand, restorative practices have provided a culturally relevant means of dealing with criminal offenders, especially juveniles. Over the past several years, the Thais have developed a restorative conferencing model that they have used in thousands of cases, with highly encouraging results.

Spearheading the restorative justice initiative is Wanchai Roujanavong, director general of Thailand’s Department of Corrections. He attributes the success of Thailand’s restorative venture in part to its cultural fit. “Thais are a very compromising people,”

Members of the community near the CSF Buxmont Trevose school have a circle meeting to share their feelings about neighborhood vandalism and brainstorm ideas to remedy the problem.When ongoing vandalism by local youth — graffiti, broken windows, littering — affected Buxmont Academy Trevose and the surrounding neighborhood of families and shop owners, school coordinator Ed Krajewski decided to apply a restorative approach used at the school, one of eight alternative schools operated by the Community Service Foundation and Buxmont Academy (CSF Buxmont) in Pennsylvania, USA

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

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.

Lorenn Walker, Kat Brady and Ted Sakai speak aboutAn 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

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

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”