Justice

Bryan Cohen, writing at Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, reports on a new program to be piloted shortly in Seattle, Washington, to keep low-level offenders out of the criminal justice system.

Andrea Brenneke, who was involved in organizing a restorative circle for a high profile case involving the murder of a Native American carver by a Seattle policemen, will serve as director of the City of Seattle's new Restorative Justice Initiative.

Cohen quotes Stephanie Tschida,

It has become a tradition in Canada since 1996 to host Restorative Justice Week during the third full week in November, and for the past 15 years to celebrate the week with a National Restorative Justice Symposium. Every year, the event is hosted by a different community-based agency in a different location around the country. This year's event takes place November 17-19 in Toronto, Ontario, hosted by YOUCAN and The Canadian Safe School Network.

Dave Fraser, Director of Special Projects & Social Media at the Canadian Safe School Network, the co-chair of the event, said, "The National Restorative Justice Symposium is

Natalie DeFreitas, a mental health counselor and restorative justice advocate, delivers a great talk on restorative justice at TedXVancouver from 2012.

After two years of preparation, the first issue of Restorative Justice: An International Journal (RJIJ), published by Hart Publishing, Oxford (UK), appeared earlier this year, and the second issue is now available electronically.

The official launch of RJIJ is September 5, 2013, at the European Society of Criminology Annual Conference, in Budapest, Hungary, featuring a lecture by Prof. Shadd Maruna, Queen's University Belfast, UK, entitled, "An Homage to Albert Eglash: Strengths Based Approaches to Restoration." All are welcome. Read a ...

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Police from Belarus during restorative circle trainingSimon Saxton, Residential and Alternative Provisions Manager, and Jacqui Raynor, Police Inspector, both for North Yorkshire, UK, and trained as IIRP UK trainers, recently visited the Gomel region of the Republic of Belarus, under the auspices of the Chernobyl Children's Project

ArchDaily accompanied their interview of VanBuren with this photo, a redesign of a courtroom from one of VanBuren’s workshops courtesy of FOURM Design StudioThis piece caught my attention for a number of reasons, not least because it comes from such a surprising and fresh direction. In a recent article titled "...

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This month the Public Broadcast System in the United States is showing a documentary film titled Fixing Juvie Justice. The film provides a critique of the revolving door of youth justice, and its criminalizing effect on many youth who originally commit very minor crimes. Then it turns to an examination of restorative justice as an alternative model, and discusses some of the roots of conferencing in New Zealand.

Dr. Lauren Abramson, founder and executive director of the ...

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I was struck by the sincerity of this post by an anonymous offender who opts for a restorative justice meeting with the person he victimized:

Pierre R. Berastaín, a student at Harvard Divinity School and co-founder of the Massachusetts Restorative Justice Collaborative, writes today on his Huffington Post blog:

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Janine P. Geske, retired Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Distinguished Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School, recently spent time as a Visiting Professor in Restorative Justice at Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She has written two blog posts for Wisconsin Restorative Justice Coalition inspired by her time abroad. In the first piece, she discusses the framework for national implementation of restorative justice (mostly mediation) processes in Belgium. In the second second, she suggests ways American

Stop and frisk policing, according to a new study, "stirs up, rather than deters, youth crime," according to an article in Time magazine. The following, by Nicole Flatow, published by the Center for American Progress, succinctly summarizes that article and the finding of the report:

Eric Assur at Restorative Justice Online has just posted a book review on Restorative Justice Today: Practical Applications, edited by Katherine S. van Wormer and Lorenn Walker. As I mentioned last fall, this book includes a chapter

The following is the beginning of a piece by Rachel Barnard posted July 17 in Urban Omnibus titled "Young New Yorkers: Restorative Justice Through Public Art."

The Young New Yorkers write their dreams on a paper airplane and give them flight to conclude the programThe wide-angle lens captures the flickering of a fan overhead and the outstretched leg of a small

Photo by miss_millions at Flickr Creative Commons

A few months ago I posted ...

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Considering the national focus on the George Zimmerman murder trial, particularly over the past month during the trial and its conclusion with a "not guilty" verdict Saturday, this piece, "Restorative Justice for Trayvon Martin," seems particularly relevant. Written by Dr. Mikhail Lyubansky, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and originally published in the Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology,

Attorney and author Hazel Thompson-Ahye has long been deeply committed to reforming justice. Now it is her mission to implement restorative practices in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as other parts of the Caribbean.

After first hearing about restorative justice in 1999 from New Zealand prison chaplain, Father Jim Consedine, at a Penal Reform International conference in London, Thompson-Ahye was inspired to become involved in initiatives that attempted to bring restorative justice to Trinidad and the Bahamas.

Then in 2012 she read an article online from the IIRP about how restorative practices could help

Several pieces of news have come through recently from New Zealand, the Land of the Long White Cloud and birthplace of "Family Group Conferencing."

The precursor to restorative conferences were developed and ensconced in law in New Zealand as part of the Children, Young Persons and their Families Actof 1989. This law led on the one hand to the family group conference (known as Family Group Decision Making in North America), which engaged extended families to develop a plan when a child was at risk of placement outside the home in cases of abuse. A

In this video, Sujatha Baliga, Director, Restorative Justice Project, and Senior Program Specialist, National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), gives a fascinating 12-minute talk linking her own Buddhist meditation practice to the concepts of restorative justice and restorative practices.

Baliga first recounts her own personal journey. As a victim of sexual abuse by her father, she first became a victim advocate before deciding to attend law school, initially to become a prosecutor. Just before beginning law school, however, she had a personally transformative experience during a 10-day silent mediation retreat which

Photo of crime victims, Eliza and Blake Webb by Dean Rutz in the Seattle Times

This remarkable story, by Christine Clarridge in the Seattle Times the other day, recounts what happened after a woman found a cell phone left behind in her ransacked car. The story begins:

"When Eliza Webb found a stranger’s cellphone inside her ransacked car last month, it didn’t take a lot of sleuthing to determine two