Research Associate

Restorative Justice (RJ) is a new justice paradigm that is unlike the traditional approaches to discipline that have been used extensively in school systems. Traditionally, discipline has been handled by the school administration or teachers and based on a system of rewards and punishments for behaviors deemed appropriate or inappropriate, respectively. Restorative Justice, on the other hand, actively involves the victim of the infraction in addressing the offender directly to hold them accountable and give them a chance to explain their actions. In this meeting, the victim and the offender are invited to decide how the offender can make amends for their misdeed. In this way, the victim can experience empowerment from being actively involved in the justice process and the offender can experience responsibility, in attempting to make sense of the breach of the school rules or normative expectations. In this process, the community of family, friends, social workers, police officers, or other interested parties are often invited to support both the victim and offender on their path towards healing and wholeness once again. Key RJ principles include: focusing on the harms of the incident instead of the broken rule, understanding that these harms create responsibilities for the offender to remedy to the best of their ability, re-establishing broken relationships, showing equal concern for the welfare of the victim and the offender, using inclusive processes based on consensus, and respecting all parties in the process of addressing an