Restorative Practice Resources Tagged With: healing

At its heart, restorative justice requires both parties working together to better understand each other’s needs and motivations in order to repair their relationship, find forgiveness, heal the harm done and find a peaceful resolution. This does not mean that perpetrators are absolved with a pardon.

The restorative lens also requires the wider community, who are indirectly impacted by the harm, to come together and offer support for this healing journey while ensuring the underlying needs/grievances that caused such harm are minimised. Likewise, communities engaged in the process learn to replace punishment with healing, hatred with forgiveness. This allows the space required to overcome shame, intimidation and judgement for both victim and offender, while facilitating the restoration of harmed relationships.

More than 5,600 Jamaicans across the island have been equipped with skills in restorative justice (RJ) better enabling them to prevent and manage conflicts.

Acting Director of the RJ Branch in the Justice Ministry’s Social Justice Division, Saccsha Ebanks, said the RJ facilitators in each parish have been instrumental in the training process.

“Every day our officers get the chance to participate in the healing of our nation. Every day they guide our clients towards achieving peace and harmony. Being trained in RJ practices enables citizens to prevent conflict and solve them when they arise,” she told JIS News in a recent interview.

Through his own work within, and outside, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Father Griffith sees the Catholic faith as not only complementing restorative justice but enhancing it. In the past decade, emerging restorative justice practices local Church leaders and laity have used to guide the archdiocese through pain on a path toward healing have become a model for other groups seeking to do the same.

“Restorative justice for me starts at home,” Michael Hoffman said. A member of St. Mary of the Woods in Chicago, Hoffman said his primary act of recovery as a clergy abuse survivor happened in 2006.

'Fleming is also sceptical of the benefits of legislative change to address the issue. But instead of an app she believes Australia should move towards a restorative justice model to address sexual assault matters.

Restorative justice is not a new concept but it gained fresh relevance during the MeToo movement in the US. It can encompass a variety of survivor-led actions to repair the harm caused by a sexual assault, including sometimes bringing the accuser and the accused together “to discuss what happened, what needs to happen, and find a way of healing or reparations”.'

'The process of Restorative Justice for Environmental Crime has been successfully used in law as a means to have greater input into decision making, and a form of healing for the communities impacted upon from unwanted developments or processes. Not only do direct impacts from unwanted operations have detrimental effects on the environment or human health, it is the unforseen externalities that have greater and longer term devastating consequences.'

'Depopulate prisons now, but then use the opportunity to think about how we can build a more effective, humane, rehabilitative system of “punishment,” one which is more healing to offenders AND to victims. "Just one single case of Covid-19 in a prison is akin to throwing a torch at the problem. The illness will, already has, spread like wildfire, endangering inmates and staff alike." But how do we transform a beast that has been integrated into our notion of justice for centuries? The good news is that, with or without Covid-19, there has always been an alternative to jails.'

'CASE STUDIES Introduction This document presents nine case studies that provide in-depth examples of the social, wellbeing and cultural outcomes achieved through restorative justice conferencing. Much of the national evidence about the effectiveness of conferencing is based on the assessment of criminogenic outcomes, such as reductions in reoffending. However, an exclusive focus on reoffending fails to capture other important benefits for victims, young people and families, such as: offenders taking responsibility for their actions; the healing benefits for victims; reductions in fear of crime; material restoration; the reintegration of marginalised young people back into their communities; and conflict resolution (Suzuki, 2017, p. 7; Larsen, 2014; Cunneen & Luke, 2007). The case studies also provide a practitioner account of the conferencing process and include reflections about key elements of effective practice. All cases have been anonymised and prepared with the consent of the young people and participants of the conference. '

'Restorative practices include teachers and staff working more collaboratively with students and encouraging them to express their feelings in different ways and to understand and respect others. A focus is on healing the hurt associated with negative behaviors. Opponents characterize restorative approaches as anti-discipline and claim these approaches don’t hold students sufficiently accountable for their actions. That is not true: Restorative approaches, by definition, provide high levels of accountability. They are emerging as an alternative to zero-tolerance approaches that see students who’ve committed wrongful actions be suspended without hearing about the impacts of their actions — directly from their victims — and without explicitly focusing on repairing the harm done.'

'At the 2019 Clio Cloud Conference, host Laurence Colletti is joined by Deanna Van Buren to talk about how architecture-assisted restorative justice can transform people and communities. She talks about her company Designing Justice + Designing Space, what they envision for a healing/peacemaking center, and how specific colors and sound can create calming environments. DJDS’s goal is to build an environment that represents equality and support through their restorative justice, education, and workforce development programs. Deanna Van Buren is co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, a nonprofit harnessing the power of design and development to transform people and communities.'

'Student Wellbeing Central to Learning and School Improvement Rationale Education in schools is largely about relationships, which can often develop into conflicts which require resolution, forgiveness and healing. Restorative practices help students learn from their mistakes and reconcile and resolve problems with others. The aim of this initiative is for schools to develop an understanding of restorative justice and learn skills and practices for use in the classroom. It is acknowledged that these prevention measures may lead to and / or require the use of interventions for more serious offences.'

'Whereas communities, activists, scholars, and scientists have primarily focused most of their energies into developing laws and making policies that identify, recognize, regulate, condemn or punish actors of ecocide, corporations or other authors that perpetuate environmental crime and harms, many have started recognizing the value and potential of restorative responses to these problems, especially the alignment of a restorative philosophy that is embedded in indigenous justice and environmental justice. In whatever version it comes, the restorative justice perspective is driven essentially by the principles of participation, harm reparation and healing, principles that must be central in conceiving environmental justice.'

'Restorative circles are an effective way of implementing restorative justice, through starting a conversation wider than just the victim and the offender. Proven to be an effective way of healing and building relationships, tackling bullying within schools and providing a sense of community, this book gives everything needed for a school to start implementing restorative circles. Accompanied by illustrations, interviews and case studies to show how to start using restorative circles, this practical guide is the perfect introduction for schools looking to improve their methods of conflict resolution.'

'Restorative justice is a way of understanding crime in terms of the people and relationships that were harmed, rather than the law that was broken. Restorative justice values human dignity, healing, accountability and the hope of redemption for all involved. Restorative practices seek include those most impacted in repairing the harm through transformative encounter that models Jesus' reconciling way. Beyond the criminal justice system, there are countless opportunities use restorative practices in our personal lives, parishes, and communities.'

'Although it originated in criminal justice, restorative justice is essentially a peacebuilding or conflict transformation approach to justice. The crossdisciplinary experience at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding has suggested some important lessons for restorative justice, peacebuilding and related fields. These include the role of trauma and victimization in justice and peacebuilding; the significance of justice questions in trauma and conflict resolution; the importance of addressing responsibilities as well as needs; the role of shame, storytelling and empathy; the commonality of underlying values; the need for our fields to address underlying issues of bias and structure; and the susceptibility of our fields to unintended consequences. Restorative justice suggests some questions and issues that may be of use to peacebuilding practitioners in general. Above all, it is important for all of us to see ourselves within a larger umbrella of peacebuilding; this will require that we move from competition to collaboration and adopt a common vision of "justpeace."'

'In The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice, Davis highlights real restorative justice initiatives that function from a racial justice perspective; these programs are utilized in schools, justice systems, and communities, intentionally seeking to ameliorate racial disparities and systemic inequities. Furthermore, she looks at initiatives that strive to address the historical harms against African Americans throughout the nation. '