Justice

Forging justice: A restorative justice mystery. Margaret Murray. Pipersville, PA: Piper's Press, 2013. 231 pp.

ISBN-13:  978-1-934355-26-8

Police detective Claire Cassidy was disillusioned after twelve years pursuing young people - often the same ones repeatedly - in the decaying steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The story mainly follows the case of one teenage girl gang who rob a convenience store. Using her usual police methods, things don't go well, until she meets the vice-principal of the girl's school. He is trying to introduce restorative practices there, although his principal believes in zero

UK Justice Minister Damian GreenAccording to a number of reports in the UK, including this one from the Belfast Telegraph:

At least £29 million will be made available over the next three years for restorative justice - the process of bringing those whose lives have been ruined by crime or conflict together with those responsible for the harm.

A

Anne Martin, director of restorative practices for Shalem Mental Health Network in Ontario, Canada, recently reviewed Margaret Murray's new mystery, Forging Justice.

Police Detective Claire Cassidy, the protagonist of Margaret Murray’s recently published novel Forging Justice: A Restorative Justice Mystery, is ready to quit her job. When it appears that Pee Wee Lebovitch has reoffended, this time killing an elderly woman, and three teenage girls have brutally attacked a storeowner leaving him in a coma, Claire has had it. She feels she cannot help keep the city safe. Her twelve years on the police force in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania feel like a waste of time. Is it time to turn in her badge?

While investigating the attack on the storeowner, Claire meets Democracy High School’s vice-principal Daniel Pierce. “Adolescence is a special kind

A piece shown during the "Saving a Place at the Table" art exhibit, from Brattleboro Community Justice Center's web siteBrattleboro Community Justice Center (Vermont, USA) presented two exhibits at the city's monthly art gallery walk to commemorate its 10th anniversary and to recognize restorative justice week, which is celebrated from November 17 to 24 in Canada and other places.

Deborah Lee Luskin, for ...

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Julie Hilt, executive director of the Solano County Bar Association (Photo by Joel Rosenbaum for the Vacaville Reporter)The Solano County Bar Association (California), headed by Julie Hilt, executive director, is working to implement a restorative justice program for at-risk youth in the county, and also develop partnerships for building community with schools and

Photo by Stuart Munro at the Wanganui Chronicle.In Wanganui, New Zealand, a city striving to become a restorative city, a company that "failed to ensure its employees' safety after a toxic leak," according to the court reporter for the Wanganui Chronicle, has pled guilty in court and is now requesting a restorative justice conference between the company and the injured workers. The report states:

"The leak on November 2 last year saw 21 workers exposed to hydrogen sulphide after a mix-up of chemicals. Two workers were in hospital for a week.

It's great to see more and more TedX talks tackling issues of restorative practices from a variety of perspectives. Here's a recent talk given by Symeon Brown at TedX Southwark in the UK. According to his bio, "Symeon has worked at the Howard League for Penal Reform with young men and women in custody, founded a grassroots youth project HYPE and was the senior researcher of the Guardian and London School of Economics investigation into the England riots."

Symeon begins his talk by looking at crime in terms of Saturday morning comics (which everyone loves!) but then turns to the topic of "Who are the real bad guys in Britain's jails?" He says that the vast majority are children, mentally ill and people who were formerly in the "carer" or social welfare system.

David Karp, a professor of sociology at Skidmore College, recently wrote an op-ed piece for the Albany, New York, Times Union arguing for broader use of restorative justice. Here are several anecdotes used to illustrate the point:

Photo by J. C. Rice from the New York Daily News shows several teens talking to Holloway before helping clean his

The Sycamore Tree Project, a world-wide program of Prison Fellowship International brings groups of crime victims into prison to meet with groups of unrelated offenders. They talk about the effects of crime, the harms it causes, and how to make things right. In a recent project in Queensland, Australia, victims of crime met for eight weeks in a program aimed to help both victims and offenders explore the impacts of crime, with the goal of fostering healing and change.

Reporters Terri Begley and Emma Sykes write:

A Fairfax student during a restorative circle simulation from a video about the FCPS Restorative Justice programPoised between the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and Washington D.C., Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), is a progressive and diverse school system on the edge of change. FCPS has initiated a system wide implementation of restorative justice processes in our schools which

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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