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So, restorative justice is really a process that pays attention not just to the
perpetrator but the victim of the act, or the crime, or the incident as well.
What I think is a beautiful part about this is that restorative justice is an opportunity for us
to resolve conflicts and promote healing.
When we look at what people do there
have been some conventional questions that get asked which govern the kind of
responses that schools make and courts make and so on.
And these questions are usually along the lines of:
Who did it? What do they deserve?
And what punishment will be given to them?
Restorative justice argues that basically those questions are not enough.
And the reason they're not enough is that they don't actually bring about change.
Now restorative justice asks a different question.
instead of saying "Who did it?"
It asks the question, "What do they need to do to actually restore the damage that
they've done as much as possible, as much as can be made to happen?"
It's trying to build up a culture in which people are encouraged, they can't be forced,
but they're encouraged to make amends the things that they do wrong, for mistakes
that they make, and to help to try and fix those.
It's not about taking an offender and making a soft option for them.
It's not about saying they are excused for anything that they've done.
In fact, It is about accountability, but instead of accountability to authority,
which is the usual way that people think,
It's an accountablity to the person who they harmed, or the persons that they have harmed.
So it digs down to the roots of those issues and doesn't cover things up,
but it pulls them out into the open, deals with them, and allows us
to walk away with a better understanding and appreciation for each other as humans.
The aim is to actually bring about change.
They learn to make up for mistakes particularly through 2 things which I think are really important.
The first one is when they actually get to hear from and
understand and respond to the person or persons that they've actually harmed.
That makes a big difference than just hearing from an authority figure.
And secondly, the thing that makes a difference and enables people to change is when you
wrap a community of care around a situation so that others who matter to
the person who has done the offending are also brought into the picture,
given a say, and given a chance to actually help address the problem.
So including all of the appropriate people in the conversation, bringing them together, and
having the ability to dialogue among themselves to promote healing and restoration,
beyond just someone getting punished for something that they did wrong.
Or beyond just a surface dealing with the incident itself.
And so the value of restorative justice is we're building mindsets around taking accountability and
ownership for the things we do that are wrong, and repairing those things, and promoting
healing in our communities. To me that's the value of restorative justice.
Schools are not just there to produce people who can read, and do math,
and calculate and those kinds of things.
They're there to actually produce citizens and good citizens are
people who are going to go forward into their adult lives knowing how to deal
with problem situations, how to respond to challenges that other people raise,
and how to actually address the problems of they've created for others,
and to make those right.
And that's what restorative justice is about.
When an incident occurs, sometimes it doesn't just affect, you know, students in the classroom,
Or just students and staff. There are times when incidents effect far beyond that. The ripple effect.
Kinda like when you throw a pebble in the pond it just ripples out and it effects people.
And so we have to know how to have the kinds of conversations that
that pays attention to those ripples and brings them into the conversation so
that when we resolve the conflict at the end of the day we all walk away
saying "We did a good job of talking this through" And we're now promoting
healing to occur and putting things in place to help us prevent these kinds of
things from happening again where we're causing harm.
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