Program Goals
Restorative justice practices are among the alternatives to exclusionary discipline that can be used in schools to address student misbehavior (Liberman and Katz 2021). Restorative justice centers on repairing harm to victims, rather than retribution for those who offended, with a focus on inclusion, accountability, and the community. It provides an alternative that may improve school safety without creating a punitive culture. Since 2008, the Central Falls School District in Rhode Island has worked with the Youth Restoration Project to implement restorative practices in its middle and high schools, building partnerships among police, schools, social services, families, and communities through training and dialogue.
One restorative justice practice, implemented in the Central Falls School District, is that of restorative justice conferences, which are highly structured, facilitated meetings that provide an opportunity for affected parties (e.g., the student who offended, the victim, and a teacher) and their allies (e.g., parents, peers) to arrive at the best possible solution for all following a negative event or behavior. The conferences are designed to help parties in conflict pursue a common vision for what an end goal would look like. All voices are heard, and participants are empowered (Liberman and Katz 2017). The goal is to repair the harm and relationships and provide the youth who committed the offense with the chance to make restitution and be reintegrated into the school community with a clean slate.
Program Components/Target Population
At the whole-school level, the Youth Restoration Project works with participating schools in the Central Falls School District on changing their approach to responding to misbehavior and more generally to changing the interaction style of teachers and other staff to be restorative rather than punitive. One part of this whole-school effort is implementing restorative justice conferences, which are designed to respond to serious misbehavior, repair harm, and hold students accountable.
The restorative justice conferences are family group conferences that involve students referred for truancy, chronic disruption, and other misbehavior that may involve direct victims (e.g., assault and theft) or without direct victims (e.g., fire alarm pulls and drug use). While district schools take different approaches to their referral processes, all schools have a student issues-and-response team to examine student data and discuss student behavior and overall school climate. At some schools, this team refers cases to conferences; in other schools, the final decision is made by the principal. Once students are referred for conferencing to restorative justice staff (which includes Youth Restoration Project facilitators and school behavior management staff who bridge communication among teachers, administrators, and conference facilitators), their parents are contacted; however, conferences can only be held if parents give consent and if students also agree to participate. Parent participation is encouraged, but conferences can proceed even if parents or guardians are unable or unwilling to participate. For instances involving direct victims, the victims are also contacted for participation, but the conferences can proceed without their participation. Victims’ parents are encouraged to participate as well.
The basic conference protocol begins with an introduction of people and their roles, followed by the facilitator reviewing conference guidelines (we ask questions; we take turns speaking; we use “I” statements, and we stick to the facts). Facilitators tell the participants that strong feelings are fine, normal, and even encouraged, but that aggression is not. The facilitators review the four basic questions discussed during a conference: 1) What happened? 2) Who was affected? 3) What does the community need? and 4) What will the student and community learn [from this experience]? Participants receive laminated copies of the overview of the conference process, of the guidelines, and of the four basic questions. Each question is discussed in a round robin format; any victim participants are given the option of speaking first, followed by the students who offended, and then by the other participants. Ultimately, the conferences work to create a restorative agreement (otherwise referred to as an "action plan") to address the question: How do we make it right? Restorative agreements are intended to contain four elements: 1) behavior change, 2) amends and restitution, 3) a learning experience, and 4) community support.
Key Personnel
Restorative justice conferencing is provided by conference facilitators and implementation managers at the Youth Restoration Project (Liberman and Katz 2017) who work in collaboration with teachers, behavior management staff, administrative staff, and principals at each school. Conference facilitators conduct considerable pre-conference work that includes separate meetings (or phone conversations) with all participants to understand their perspectives and ensure they understand what a restorative justice conference entails and the guidelines for conferences. Facilitators also attempt to work with families to understand whether there were family needs or issues that contributed to the students’ misbehavior. If conference facilitators identify clinical or therapeutic needs, they make referrals to appropriate services.
Program Theory
The general philosophy of restorative justice is that responses to misbehavior should seek to repair the harm from misbehavior; thus, when that misbehavior includes direct victims, repairing the harm generally requires involving the victims (Bazemore and Umbreit 1995; Braithwaite 1989). This approach is based on “reintegrative shaming” (Braithwaite 1989) and focuses on repairing relationships and social and community bonds (Karp and Breslin 2001). A variety of restorative justice models are used in the school context, including mediation between the victim and person committing the offense, peer courts, and restorative justice conferences.
