State of Restorative Practices in American Schools

I am grateful to two wonderful colleagues whom I have visited with recently for these understandings.

Currently restorative practices in schools are often marginalized to end-of-the-line interventions. Apparently schools are not willing to change the culture, the status quo. In that event, I believe we must focus on helping the students who are the focus of our interventions to find a place where they can learn in an atmosphere that values:

• Supporting these students to build and maintain peaceful and caring relationships and
• Helping these students to flourish.

I urge restorative practices practitioners to avoid placing or being an accomplice to placing these students back into an environment where they are doomed to fail.

My research reveals that American schools tend to view restorative practices as a response to wrongdoing and conflict, rather than a basis for transformation of the school culture. Schools are strongly resistant to change. They would rather make minor adjustments to the status quo and term it reform. The Culture of Care in Schools that I help schools engage in calls for profound change.

New Publication

I am honored to have my latest publication appear in the Journal for Peace and Justice Studies, alongside respected scholars and practitioners in the field. I encourage you to consider purchasing a copy of this edition of the journal. I believe the articles provide a current look into our work and thinking about restorative justice.

Announcing a SPECIAL ISSUE of the
Journal for Peace and Justice Studies
on
Restorative Justice

Featuring
JOYCE ZAVARICH
Revisioning Justice: The Justice Context for Understanding and
Operationalizing Restorative Justice
HOWARD ZEHR
The Intersection of Restorative Justice with Trauma Healing, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding
GORDON BAZEMORE
Getting and Keeping It Real: Less than Perfect Restorative Justice Intervention and the Value of Small Connections
TOM CAVANAGH
Creating a New Discourse of Peace in Schools: Restorative Justice in Education
TERRY O’CONNELL
The Origins of Restorative Conferencing
LAURA MIRSKY
Restorative Justice Practices of Native American Practitioners of the Southwestern United States
ABBEY J. PORTER
Restorative Conferencing in Thailand: A Resounding Success with Juvenile Crime

To Order this Single Issue
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Back Issues are $15 per volume.
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Please make all checks payable to The Journal for Peace and Justice Studies.
Return to: Managing Editor
The Journal for Peace and Justice Studies
Center for Peace & Justice Education
Villanova University, Sullivan Hall
800 Lancaster Avenue Villanova, PA 19085-1699 Thank you for your order!

Responding to conflicts and problems nonviolently

In today's newspaper a write speculates as the reasons why so many mass killings are occurring. The writer largely blames problems related to the current financial crisis. I have wrestled with the same questions while conducting research over the past five years and have come to a different conclusion.
I do not claim that what I offer is the answer; rather, perhaps a contributing factor. I have found that when problems and conflicts arise in our schools teachers ignore them, respond with punishment, or send the person(s) involved off to an expert to solve the problem. These problems are seen to be disruptions to the learning rather than learning opportunities.
If these problems and conflicts are transformed into learning opportunities, then the capacity of teachers and students can be enhanced to respond nonviolently. If teachers and students behave as passive participants in the problems and conflicts, they they will not know how to respond nonviolently to these events when they occur later in life.
Restorative justice theory offers us a way to understand this new response to problems and conflict. Restorative practices offer us skills to use when responding to problems and conflict nonviolently.

Invitation to talk about lessons learned in New Zealand

I would like to personally invite you to attend a talk I am giving at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder, Colorado, on Monday, March 16th, at 6:00 p.m., titled:

Creating a Culture of Care in Schools:
Lessons Learned About Using Restorative Practices in New Zealand Schools

The talk will be based on the chapter I wrote for a book to be published next year titled: International Perspectives on Restorative Justice in Education.

Included in the talk will be an emphasis on what I learned from my relationships with Maori - what they call whakawhanaungatanga.

Abolish the death penalty

One of the cornerstones of restorative justice theory is that every person is endowed with dignity as a birthright. Human dignity remains with the person from conception to natural death. Thus, there is no place for capital punishment or the death penalty in restorative justice theory and practice.

Currently the Colorado Legislature is considering a bill to abolish the death penalty - House Bill 1274. Although the motive underlying this bill is economic (freeing up money to devote to cold cases) rather than moral (upholding the idea of human dignity), I support passage of the bill because the outcome is consistent with restorative justice principles.

As I wrote several years ago emphasis on law and punishment may result on a safe community for the dominant society but does not create a peaceful community for all. In order to create peace in our communities we need to turn from retribution to healing the harm of crime and restoring relationships among persons causing harm to others, persons harmed, their families and friends, and all people in our communities.

The death penalty is contrary to restoration of the common good. Fundamental to the philosophy of the common good is respect for the human dignity of each person. Such respect is fundamental to restorative justice. Execution of offenders who murder is utter disrespect for human life. Thus, opposition to the death penalty is a core value of justice based on restoration of peace among individuals living together in community.

So often we read of brutal murders in the headlines. We fail to realize murders more often happen between people who know each other and may even be related. I am reminded of a case I listened to as a court reporter involving a father letting his daughter sit on his lap and drive their pickup. How often did we let out children do the same thing? The father in this case was drunk. He and his daughter were driving on a graveled, country road. The pickup went off the road and crashed. The daughter died as a result of the crash.

I first saw the father several days later in court. He stood before me crying uncontrollably, so much so we could not proceed. Did he deserve to be punished? Yes, I think so, but all our punitive sanctions could not increase the guilt and remorse the father felt. Yet, our judicial system, rather than healing the harm of this crime, followed mandatory sentencing guidelines and separated this poor, ethnic minority family by placing this father in prison for a lengthy time and leaving the mother and other children without the father and provider for their family.

Such action does not deter crime nor rehabilitate the offender. Rather, we are destroying families, ethnic cultures, and communities of people.

Just as in this case, the death penalty does not result in the execution of people like me, white, affluent, and employed in meaningful work. The death penalty primarily affects the poor, mentally ill, dark skinned, addicted, and those vulnerable people living on the margins of our society.

We as believers in restorative justice are called upon to not only oppose the death penalty but to rebuff a justice system based on expediency and efficiency in favor of a justice system founded on the common good, focused on the healing of persons harmed, persons causing harm, their families and supporters, and all members of our communities. To do this will take great courage. Let us pray together for courage to create peace in our communities through restorative justice.

Egalitarianism or dominance hierarchy

We in the United States of America look proudly to our Declaration of Independence, which states that all men (persons) are created equal. And that is the definition of egalitarianism. However, as a nation we have moved steadily in the direction of being a dominance hierarchy. In this new social order social relations are ordered according to power and wealth that comes with power. Whereas, an egalitarian society is based on fairness and individual needs, particularly regarding human dignity.

Since restorative justice is based on the idea of building and maintaining positive and caring relationships, let's look at these two dimensions from that perspective. In the dominance hierarchy social order relationships are based on power and fear. Conversely in an egalitarian society relationships are based on social obligations, equality, and cooperation.

If restorative justice is to become part of the mainstream of American life, then society needs to move along the continuum from being a dominance hierarchy to a more egalitarian society. Hopefully, that is the fundamental change that President Barack Obama and others in the Democratic party support. At the present moment we are suffering from the negative economic and social impacts of a social order based on dominance hierarchy. We need to admit this is a failed ideology when it comes to creating a new social order of relationships based on equality rather than suffering the negative impacts of inequality.

I encourage you to read The Impact of Inequality by Richard Wilkinson to learn more about these ideas.

One in 100 adults in jail or prison (continued)

Bill Moyers made reference to the fact he had read an article in Sojourners magazine. that article appeared in the February 2009 of the publication and is titled, A Broken System, by Rose Marie Berger and Jeannie Choi. The article states:

For the first time in history, according to a recent study by the Pew Center on the States, more than one in every 100 adults in the U.S. is in jail or prison. There has not been, however, a correlating decrease in crime. “The education system, particularly for inner-city youth where the bulk of our prisoners come from, is abysmal,” Carol Fennelly, executive director of Hope House, a Washington, D.C.-based organization supporting prisoners’ families, told Sojourners. “We need real job opportunities and a reformed society in which people don’t end up in prison in the first place.” Here are some numbers:

* 67 percent: People released from prison who are re-arrested within three years.

* 32 percent: Increase in federal prisoners between 2000 and 2007, which coincides with the 454 new offenses added to the federal criminal code during that same period.

* 7.4 million. Number of people under the control of the U.S. criminal justice system in 2007.

* 83.5 percent: People in jail in 2002 who earned less than $2,000 per month prior to arrest.

* 64 percent: Increase in criminal justice-related government spending between 1996 and 2005, reaching a height of $213 billion in 2005.

Sources: “Moving Target: A Decade of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex” (Justice Policy Institute, September 2008); “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008” (The Pew Center on the States); The Washington Post. A Broken System. by Rose Marie Berger and Jeannie Choi. Sojourners Magazine, February 2009 (Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 10). Between the Lines.

These statistics are not only disturbing, they, in fact, graphically point out to us the impact of disparity. While we live in a wonderful country and most of us enjoy a good lifestyle, not all people in America share in that quality life, and those that don't are generally not white, middle or upper class, and mentally and physically healthy. As a result we need to admit that our legal system is racially and socioecominically constructed. Until we acknowledge this fundamental truth, we will not be able to create the profound change that is required to create an America where all people can flourish.