Justice

Each class provides an intensive learning experience.

As an IIRP graduate student, you will find that courses incorporate readings, lecture, reflection, videos, role-play, discussion, group exercises, and case studies. These activities are designed to enhance the learning outcomes of each course.

At the IIRP Graduate School, learning and community are built using various forms of communication between faculty and fellow students, including video conferencing, email, social media, chat, and discussion boards.

Course requirements for each program option

From right to left: Magistrate Doris Arias Madrigal, IIRP President John Bailie, Lourdes Espinach, coordinator of the Costa Rica National Restorative Justice Program, and IIRP Representative Miguel Tello. Costa Rica’s National Restorative Justice Program is providing a humane, satisfying and democratic process for participants, and is proving to be more cost-effective than traditional criminal justice. NGOs and schools are also applying restorative practices, with IIRP Latinoamérica showing the way.

Magistrate Doris Arias Madrigal, a justice of the Costa Rica Supreme Court in San José, is spearheading the Restorative Justice Program. She

Lecturer

Dr. Nicola Preston began her involvement with restorative practices as a police officer with Thames Valley Police, in the United Kingdom, where she was part of a team — the Restorative Justice Consultancy — that successfully introduced restorative justice into police work. She has also been a school teacher specializing in children with special needs, thus bringing two distinct and relevant areas of expertise to the IIRP Graduate School. Nicola is now a senior lecturer in special educational needs (SEN) and inclusion, and program lead for the National Award in SEN Co-ordination, at the University of Northampton in the U.K.

Nicola has published numerous book chapters, articles and research reports in the U.K. and Europe and is on the editorial committee of the European Forum for Restorative Justice Newsletter. She has presented at many national and international conferences. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Northampton. Her research thesis was

Lecturer

A. Miguel Tello is an experienced program monitoring and evaluation and organizational development consultant working with organizations throughout Central America. He was introduced to restorative practices through his role as program manager for restorative justice programing with the Prison Fellowship International Center for Justice and Reconciliation, Latin America.

Miguel is an executive coach, certified by the International Coaching Federation and by INCAE Business School in Costa Rica. He offers restorative practices training and consulting to a variety of non-governmental organizations in Central America. He also teaches an online course on measuring program outcomes and impact for the Center for Executive Education at the University for Peace in Costa Rica. He earned his Master

Associate Professor

Dr. Fernanda Fonseca Rosenblatt is an Associate Professor at the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP, USA). She is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Society of Victimology and the Book Review Editor for the International Journal of Restorative Justice and a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of Pernambuco - UNICAP (Brazil)  She is also a member of the Research Committee of the European Forum for Restorative Justice and of the Asa Branca Research Group of Criminology (UNICAP).

Fernanda's research interests include restorative, community and youth justice, critical criminology and victimology. She has published peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in these areas in Brazil and abroad and is the author of The Role of Community in Restorative Justice (Routledge, 2015).

Fernanda earned a doctoral degree in Criminology from the University of Oxford (UK) in

Assistant Professor

Dr. Borbála Fellegi brings her work as a researcher, mediator, and conference and peacemaking-circle facilitator to the IIRP. As founder and executive director of the Foresee Research Group, she oversees Hungarian and EU programs researching potential applications of mediation and peacemaking circles in community conflicts and prison settings, and she performs conflict resolution-related research, as well as community-building and training projects.

Borbála has been a consultant for the Council of Europe, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the National Crime Prevention Board and the Hungarian Ministry of Justice, and she coordinated a project for the European Forum for Restorative Justice on restorative justice implementation in Central and Eastern Europe. Foresee Research Group, which she has led since 2008, received the 2018 European Forum for Restorative Justice award for outstanding contributions to the development of

Families are very much involved in their children’s growth and change at CSF Buxmont’s Restorative Reporting Centers (RRC), an IIRP model program for adjudicated youth, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Youth attend the RRC program five evenings a week to focus on social skills, self control, family connectedness, moral reasoning and responsibility, as a part of their development. In this innovative 20-week community-based alternative to out-of-home placement, the youths’ family members are involved from the start.

The borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan are a dangerous and violent place. But it is here that a student of restorative justice, Ali Gohar, founder of Just Peace Initiatives, based in Peshawar, Pakistan, has worked to reinvigorate and reinvent traditional conflict resolution practices.

In this tribal region, inhabited largely by ethnic Pukhtoon, wrongdoing can spiral into cycles of vengeance. Family feuds can last for generations. For instance, nearly 60 years after the event, a man avenged his father’s murder by in turn killing the original murderer’s grandson. Revenge killings continued back and forth between the two families until a total of a dozen people were dead. Without the intervention of the jirga – a tribal council “organized by wise, respectable, greybeard elders whose decision is unanimous, acceptable to all community

As the restorative practices social movement gathers steam in schools, justice, communities and beyond, practitioners, academics and advocates are looking for new ways to connect and work together to common purpose.

The Peace Alliance, a national grassroots advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that promotes practical methods for reducing violence, transforming conflict and enhancing cooperation, sees as one of its functions to facilitate these cross connections.

Vidia Negrea will be a featured presenter at the IIRP Europe 2015 conference. The conference, entitled "From Dream to Reality: Dawning of a New Social Science," will be held June 10-12, 2015, in Budapest, Hungary. Learn more »

Vidia will chair the morning plenary session on day one, a panel about applications of restorative practices in criminal justice settings. She will also present in two breakout sessions related to her work in corrections (details below).

 

 

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Quaker chaplain Kate Johnson, photo via OurWindsor.ca In an article for the Perth Courier, Desmond Devoy writes:

Kate Johnson is not a member of the Hug-A-Thug Club.

Neither does she want to lock up prisoners and throw away the key.

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The following is a guest post by Ian D. Marder, Ph.D. student, School of Law, University of Leeds, UK and founder, Community of Restorative Researchers.

This article argues in favor of the establishment of a national organization in the United Kingdom which represents and is run collectively by volunteer restorative practitioners. Such an organization is now necessary given the widespread use of volunteers in restorative practices delivery in this jurisdiction. The organization would help to enable both best practice and resources to be shared by encouraging communication and collaboration between the wide array of organizations and individuals involved in the delivery of restorative practices in a voluntary

One in Four, a Dublin, Ireland-based organization that works to support adult victims of childhood sexual abuse, as well as sexual offenders and their respective families, aspires to make the world a place where all children are safe from sexual violence. Sadly, though, research shows that currently one-in-four people in Ireland experience sexual violence at some time during their lives.

The organization, which since 2002 has offered advocacy and psychotherapeutic services to survivors of sexual violence, has, since 2012, sought professional development from IIRP Europe so it can offer restorative services for clients and provide a new

“When they use restorative practices, professionals suddenly get back their self-esteem,” says Vidia Negrea, director of Community Service Foundation of Hungary (CSF Hungary), in Budapest. “They see how worthy their work can be.”

Negrea was appointed this month by the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) Board of Trustees as its newest member.

“I think of the IIRP as a restorative institution,” says Negrea. “The whole IIRP is a model of thinking and living in a restorative way. Even when the crises within politics and government make me very depressed, when I practice and people feel the effects of restorative practices, they start to regain their trust in themselves and the world.”

photo by Kris Krug at FlickrAcross the state of Vermont, nearly 50 serious offenders, who are considered high-risk to reoffend, are meeting weekly with small teams of volunteers who have signed on to hold them accountable for their past criminal behavior and to support them to become contributing members of society. These offenders have very little family and community support, and Circles of Accountability, or CoSAs, are formed around the released offenders to help them make

IIRP Trainer Lee Rush during a Training of Trainers in Jamaica. Slain peace worker Mohan Bunwarrie is second from Rush's left.“My goal is to make Jamaica a restorative country,” said Carol Palmer, Permanent Secretary of the Jamaican Ministry of Justice. “I know this vision is grand and beyond one generation. But I believe we can do something to change the fact that too many Jamaicans do not know how to settle differences and disputes peacefully, and instead perpetuate violence amongst each other and our

St. Croix Valley Restorative Justice Program (SCVRJP), based in River Falls, Wisconsin, USA, has developed a unique practice for working with young adults who have been arrested for crimes such as underage drinking, possession of drugs and paraphernalia, disorderly conduct and teen driving offenses. Using a restorative circle process, SCVRJP brings together offenders referred by the local courts, universities and high schools, who meet together with previous offenders and other community volunteers who have been impacted by these issues. A volunteer circle-keeper facilitates a focused discussion to present information to participants and to share a

The Latin American Institute of Restorative Practices (El Instituto Latino Americano de Prácticas Restaurativas or ILAPR), IIRP’s affiliate based in Lima, Peru, has been working for three years to foster the development of restorative practices throughout South America and in Mexico. Jean Schmitz, director of ILAPR, and his colleagues, have provided basic restorative practices training to approximately 1,000 people in seven countries, including Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Columbia. This professional development is beginning to have an

In this short video segment, Les Davey, chief executive of IIRP Europe, discusses work his organization has done in Ireland with victims of sexual abuse by clergy. Sexual abuse cases require careful handling, but they can be powerful experiences, especially for victims. In this video Davey describes one example of the positive effects a conference had for a victim of abuse, who was finally able to sleep well after the restorative meeting. Davey has recently been approached to run a restorative conference for a child in England who was abused in her home at a young age by an ex-boyfriend of her mother.

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Cody Gates and his father, Gordy Gates, discuss the impact of a restorative conference after Cody set off fireworks into a crowd, from a video presentation sponsored by Easter Seals / Goodwill of the Northwest (watch below).There’s a restorative revolution taking place across the U.S. state of Idaho, originating in the field of juvenile justice and radiating out to schools and communities. It began a few years ago and is being driven by a mostly rural eight-county district in