Justice and Peacebuilding

The purpose of this book is to illuminate a theory of youth engagement in restorative justice that seeks to create systems change for more equitable schools. The authors define youth engagement in restorative justice as partnering with young people most impacted by structural injustice as changemakers in all aspects of restorative practices including community building, healing, and the transformation of institutions. Based on Adam Fletcher's version of the Ladder of Youth Engagement, coupled with Barbara Love's model of liberatory consciousness and an analysis of youth engagement in Restorative Justice in three different regions-Western Massachusetts, Oakland, and Houston-the authors provide a theoretical contribution: Youth Engagement in Restorative Justice grounded in liberatory consciousness. In this book readers will find: • Comparative case studies from different parts of the country of youth led restorative justice programs. • An exploration of the cultural and historical context of each region to situate the work. • Stories from the authors' own lives that provide context for their interest in the work given their varied racial identities (White, Black, Latinx, South Asian) and upbringing. • Literature review of the language of youth engagement vs. youth leadership/youth organizing/youth participation, along with a new definition of youth engagement in restorative justice. • Theoretical framing based on Adam Fletcher's Ladder of Youth Engagement , which provides a structure for the book. • Exploration of how adults must combat adultism both individually and systematically as a prerequisite to doing this work. • Student narratives. • Applications of the work in the virtual context.

Restorative justice is gaining acceptance for addressing harm and crime. Interventions have been developed for a wide range of wrongdoing. This book considers the use of restorative justice in response to sexual abuse. Rather than a blueprint or detailing a specific set of programs, it is more about mapping possibilities. It allows people to carefully consider its use in responding to violent crimes such as sexual abuse. Criminal justice approaches tend to sideline and re-traumatize victims, and punish offenders to the detriment of accountability. Alternatively, restorative justice centers on healing for victims, while holding offenders meaningfully accountable. Criminal justice responses tend to individualize the problem, and catch marginalized communities, such as ethnic minorities, within its net. Restorative justice recognizes that sexual abuse is a form of gender-based violence. Community-based practices are needed, sometimes in conjunction with, and sometimes to counteract, traditional criminal justice responses. This book describes impacts of sexual abuse, and explanations for sexual offending, demonstrating how restorative justice can create hope through trauma.

A restorative justice approach to addressing sexual misconduct in colleges and universities. Written for college and university practitioners and administrators, “The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Campus Sexual Harms” combines explanation, justification, and contextualization for the application of restorative justice for sexual misconduct, including for alleged Title IX violations. This book outlines considerations, action steps, and best practices for campuses who are interested in exploring the successful implementation of RJ for sexual misconduct. The opening chapter explores the "why," while the final chapter examines the "how" of RJ for sexual harms and Title IX for college and university campuses. The authors' backgrounds as practitioners within the higher education context grounds this work with personal reflections, experiences, and stories. The 2020 passage of the Final Rule of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 redesigned the law, ceding extensive authority to individual educational institutions to customize their approach to Title IX compliance. While some argue that the Final Rule may leave students less safe, there are now emergent opportunities, as federal Title IX regulations have also made allowances for the augmentation of investigative/adjudicatory Title IX processes with additional "informal" resolution options. These options can be designed to more specifically and appropriately address the harms, meet the needs, and attend to resultant obligations for those involved in situations of campus sexual misconduct. This book provides a primer for colleges and universities who seek to move campus culture in a more restorative direction generally, and specifically for practitioners interested in exploring the possibility of amending existing sexual misconduct policies, including investigative/ adjudicatory Title IX policy and procedures, through a restorative justice informed adaptive lens. Readers will explore why it makes all the difference (both for students and administrators) to add adaptive resolution options, from both cognitive and moral development standpoints, and for purely practical reasons.

Engaging Practices for Integrating Restorative Justice Principles in Group Settings. As restorative practices spread around the world, scholars and practitioners have begun to ask very important questions: How should restorative practices be taught? What educational structures and methods are in alignment with restorative values and principles? This book introduces games as an effective and dynamic tool to teach restorative practices. Grounded in an understanding of restorative pedagogy and experiential learning strategies, the games included in this book provide a way for learners to experience and more deeply understand restorative practices while building relationships and improving skills. Chapters cover topics such as: Introduction to restorative pedagogy. Discussion of learning and restorative practices. Overview of games as teaching tools. Implementation of games-based training. Games for building restorative communities, strengthening relationships, understanding restorative philosophy, and developing skills in the practice. An ideal handbook for educators, restorative justice program directors and trainers, consultants, community group leaders, and anyone else whose work draws people together to resolve disagreements or address harm, this book will serve as a catalyst for greater creativity and philosophical alignment in the teaching of restorative practices across contexts.

A restorative approach to environmental justice. This little book discusses paths to address environmental conflicts based on a restorative justice perspective of imagining, practicing, and living justice. It proposes an approach that understands the relationship between humankind and environment beyond the narrow conception of homo economicus, considering the human beings in their social, political, economic, historic, spiritual, cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and ecological dimensions, as well as in their connection with nature and non-human entities. When applied to environmental problematics, restorative justice needs to widen its perspective beyond an anthropocentric worldview, transcending the interpretation that human beings are the exclusively subjects of dignity, rights, needs, and speech capability. It is necessary to dilate horizons towards non-human entities and the natural spaces we inhabit and with whom we are deeply connected. This dilation should stimulate justice experiences that integrate building peace, sustainability, and good living, beyond ideas such as unlimited economic growth and even sustainable development. To this end, a restorative conception of justice implies an expanded understanding of justice that faces structural, cultural, institutional, and historical violence, as well as deals with intergenerational responsibility that integrate the present generations to those of the past in order to build the desired future for the generations to come.

Victim offender dialogues have been developed as a way to hold offenders accountable to the person they have harmed and to give victims a voice about how to put things right. It is a way of acknowledging the importance of the relationship, of the connection which crime creates. Granted, the relationship is a negative one, but there is a relationship. Amstutz has been a practitioner and a teacher in the field for more than 20 years.

Can community-building begin in a classroom? The authors of this book believe that by applying restorative justice at school, we can build a healthier and more just society. With practical applications and models. Can an overworked teacher possibly turn an unruly incident with students into an "opportunity for learning, growth, and community-building"? If restorative justice has been able to salvage lives within the world of criminal behavior, why shouldn't its principles be applied in school classrooms and cafeterias? And if our children learn restorative practices early and daily, won't we be building a healthier, more just society? Two educators answer yes, yes, and yes in this new addition to The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series. Amstutz and Mullet offer applications and models. "Discipline that restores is a process to make things as right as possible." This Little Book shows how to get there.

A practical guide to listening well in restorative justice programs and any relationship. The Little Book of Listening is an introduction to and practical guide for listening as an emergent strategy for creating a transformed world. It presents radical listening as an essential macro-skill, one that is essential in forming "right relationships" with ourselves and others that are the necessary prerequisite to all lasting forms of social change. This is a collaborative book, constructed from the contributions of twenty-six listeners from a wide variety of backgrounds who have shared their strategies, experiences, inspiration, and hopes for a transformed world through listening justly and equitably. One of the primary goals of the book is to offer practical tools for readers to develop the skills to listen to themselves and others more effectively, drawing attention to the barriers and filters that so often distract us from listening. Another goal is to inspire readers through the personal stories of how just listening has impacted the authors and invite readers to adopt these approaches themselves. Finally, we aim for this text to be a resource for practitioners in the fields of justice-building and peacebuilding. Conversations are how humans explore new ideas and reach new understandings: paradigms shift and the world is changed by our communication with each other. Whatever processes are used, it is imperative that facilitators and participants listen deeply, humbly, and attentively, without ego or agenda, to themselves and to one another.

A concise and practical guide to bringing the day-to-day practice of restorative justice programs into closer alignment with restorative values. In the past twenty-five years there has been an explosion of programs, projects, and initiatives that use the terms "restorative justice" or "restorative practices." This reflects multiple trends: the failures and inhumanity of justice system policies and practices; the unfairness and ineffectiveness of "zero tolerance" and other punitive measures adopted in our schools, and the positive impact of those who have promoted restorative practices for the past several decades around the world. This complex mix has generated an array of programs that utilize restorative ideas and practices in a wide variety of ways, such as court diversion, deeply spiritual circle work, and national and international truth and reconciliation projects. Some of these programs are designed to address incidences of harm that fall within large systems (family group conferencing, victim offender dialogue, circles, COSA, etc.) or in schools where they are often focused on addressing incidences of harm in an effort to change the over reliance on suspensions and expulsions as a way to modify student behaviors. There are other experiments in restorative justice that move this work into community settings, with a focus on healing and the creation of more empathic relationships. As the authors know from experience, there is often a gap between values and the reality of day to day practice. This Little Book strives to find ways to shrink that gap and to bring our practice and the structures and methods that employ them into closer alignment with restorative values. Simply put, this book asks, how can we better align restorative theory and practice in our work? In order to have truly restorative programs (programs that strive for consistency between their stated values and their real-life practices) the authors offer some ways to integrate restorative practices and values into the strategies used to design, implement, and assess them. They propose the use of another transformative practice, Participatory Action Research (PAR), as a powerful ally in the work of developing restorative practices and the programs that hold them.

How can we effectively address the threat of terrorism? What helps being about long-term security? What stops cycles of victimhood? What role can Restorative Justice play? This fully updated edition offers insightful answers. Following the staggering events of September 11, 2001, the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University was asked to help, along with Church World Service, to equip religious and civil leaders for dealing with traumatized communities. The staff and faculty proposed Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) programs. Now, STAR director, Carolyn Yoder, has shaped the strategies and learnings from those experiences into this newly updated book for all who have known terrorism and threatened security. Topics covered include: • Trauma as a call to change and transformation • Societal or collective trauma • Trauma affects us physiologically • Ongoing trauma • Limitations of defining unhealed trauma through a PTSD frame • Incomplete grieving • Acknowledgment • Reconnection • Prevent trauma by learning to wage peach • And much more. A startlingly helpful approach. A title in The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series.

Discover the police-youth dialogue (PYD) as a method to build trustworthiness, mend relationships, and heal historical harms between black youth and law enforcement. This timely book from the Justice and Peacebuilding series offers an explanation of the need for meaningful dialogue between law enforcement and black youth, a blueprint for implementing police-youth dialogues, best practices and examples, anecdotes and narratives from participants, different models and formats, potholes and limitations, and tangible tools and action steps for starting a police-youth dialogue program. Ultimately, the strategies and techniques used in effective police-youth dialogues can bring attention to issues of implicit bias and the impact of toxic stress on marginalized groups, ameliorate tensions between law enforcement officers and black youth, and build toward a model of community policing and restorative justice rather than punitive discipline and violence. The Little Book of Police-Youth Dialogue presents readers with relevant knowledge and research regarding trauma and race in the United States, strategies for creating a safe space of attentive listening and mediating genuine connections between police officers and black youth, and specific ways to take action in ameliorating police-youth tensions and promoting healing in their local communities.

A Practitioner's Reference and Guide to Implement Restorative Justice on Campus Here's a call to colleges and universities to consider implementing restorative practices on their campuses, ensuring fair treatment of students and staff while minimizing institutional liability, protecting the campus community, and boosting morale, from an associate dean of student affairs who has put these models to work on his campus. Restorative justice is a collaborative decision-making process that includes victims, offenders, and others who are seeking to hold offenders accountable by having them (a) accept and acknowledge responsibility for their offenses, (b) to the best of their ability, repair the harm they caused to victims and communities, and (c) work to reduce the risk of re-offense by building positive social ties to the community. David Karp writes in his introduction, "As a student affairs administrator, I have become deeply committed to the concept and practice of restorative justice. I have experienced how it can work given the very real pressures among campus conduct administrators to manage high case loads, ensure fair treatment, minimize institutional liability, protect the campus community, boost morale in a division with high turnover, and help students learn from their mistakes without creating insurmountable obstacles to their future successes."

As our global population ages, conflicts and difficult conversations emerge. How will older adults decide who will make end-of-life health and financial decisions for them? When will dad need to move out of his home and into long-term care? We can't have mom living with us anymore because it's just too hard. Why are my children fighting over where I will live? Why is my son taking money from me? These are challenging scenarios that ever-increasing numbers of people are facing. Sometimes these difficulties are discussed in catastrophic terms: Untenable health-care costs Exhausted pension funds Crises in home-care and long-term housing And other concerns Certainly, there are some reasons to worry; however, the challenges facing older adults can be an opportunity for positive change. The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Older Adults is about providing safe and respectful processes to assist in resolving conflict and addressing abuse involving older adults, families, caregivers, and communities. Authors Julie Friesen and Wendy Meek explore ideas to help connect and support people, building on the strengths and capacities of older adults and their families, in order to strengthen communities. Restorative justice dialogues help older adults and their families talk constructively and safely to find ways to move forward together.

When conflicts become ingrained in communities, people lose hope. Dialogue is necessary but never sufficient, and often actions prove inadequate to produce substantial change. Even worse, chosen actions create more conflict because people have different lived experiences, priorities, and approaches to transformation. So what's the story? In The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing, David Anderson Hooker offers a hopeful, accessible approach to dialogue that: Integrates several practice approaches including restorative justice, peacebuilding, and arts Creates welcoming, non-divisive spaces for dialogue Names and maps complex conflicts, such as racial tensions, religious divisions, environmental issues, and community development as it narrates simple stories Builds relationships and foundations for trust needed to support long-term community transformation projects And results in the crafting of hopeful, future-oriented visions of community that can transform relationships, resource allocation, and structures in service of communities' preferred narratives. The Little Book Transformative Community Conferencing will prove valuable and timely to mediators, restorative justice practitioners, community organizers, as well as leaders of peacebuilding and change efforts. It presents an important, stand-alone process, an excellent addition to the study and practice of strategic peacebuilding, restorative justice, conflict transformation, trauma healing, and community organizing. This book recognizes the complexity of conflict, choosing long-term solutions over inadequate quick fixes. The Transformative Community Conferencing model emerges from the author's thirty years of practice in contexts as diverse as South Sudan; Mississippi; Greensboro, North Carolina; Oakland, California; and Nassau, Bahamas.

Creating Restorative Learning Experiences Online Teaching, training, and gathering online has become a global norm since 2020. Restorative practitioners have risen to the challenge to shift restorative justice processes, trainings, and classes to virtual platforms, a change that many worried would dilute the restorative experience. How can people build relationships with genuine empathy and trust when they are not in a shared physical space? How can an online platform become an environment for people to take risks and practice new skills without the interpersonal support available when meeting face to face? This book provides instructions for experiential games and activities that are intentionally designed for online learning spaces. It builds upon the core concepts of restorative pedagogy introduced in The Little Book of Restorative Teaching Tools (2020) to guide trainers and facilitators to overcome perceived limitations of virtual training and lean into the tools and possibilities that are unique to online spaces to create meaningful, engaging restorative learning environments. This guide is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to build community and foster development of restorative justice knowledge and skills via online platforms. The games and activities included support building relationships, introducing the restorative justice philosophy, practicing key skills, and understanding and addressing structural and racial injustices. More resources are available at restorativeteachingtools.com.