“But the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.”
~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Restorative Justice Practices (RJPs) in schools are intended to strengthen relationships in a school community and foster an inclusive, equitable, collaborative, and positive school climate. RJPs require training, practice and above all a mindset shift away from powering over- towards powering with- a school community and away from punitive responses to harm and towards restorative repairs with accountability measures.
RJPs require sufficient and sustained resources such as dedicated RJP specialists at each school and time for preventative practices of self-care, relationship building, maintenance and conflict resolution.
For especially complex or large-scale harms that involve various persons who directly and indirectly experienced harm with those who caused harm, restorative justice processes require skilled facilitators to design and facilitate a repair process and willing parties that agree to and may co-create the process.
Unlike with retributive responses that investigate what rule was broken and prescribe punishment to the rule breaker, RJPs ask “who was harmed and what is needed to make things right?” Accordingly, these practices put harmed persons’ experiences and needs at the center of responses and do not require dialogues if parties do not want to participate in them.
The MoCo360 article published on February 28, 2023, reported that students and data suggest that RJPs are failing in MCPS. If RJP interventions have caused harm, there needs to be repair and rebuilding of trust on the structuring and implementation of these interventions. We also must recognize that repair processes are often difficult for participants and require support for each party.
RJPs were introduced to 43 MCPS schools in the 2018-2019 school year. In the summer of 2021, all MCPS staff participated in a required, brief training to begin implementation of RJPs in each of MCPS 210 schools. Currently, nine instructional RJP specialists cover all 210 MCPS county schools. While the county has staff who act as RJ coaches in each school, more time and training for all staff is needed for adequate implementation.
Further, comprehensive change requires four to five years, especially in a large school district such as MCPS, so we must manage our expectations about what these practices can accomplish at this stage. RJPs will thus require continued training, more specialized, dedicated staff and time for schools to move into whole school implementation and to move from responses that are reactive to those which are intermediate to mature.
RJPs are expanding in the U.S. and abroad in various social arenas including schools (K-college), workplaces, criminal justice systems, and the merits and best practices of restorative justice programs are endorsed by the United Nations with promising results.
MarylandHouse Bill 725, enacted May 2019, requires all Maryland Public schools to implement and continuously monitor restorative approaches to student discipline. RJPs are thus here to stay and must be improved.
RJPs are rooted in the principles of non-violence that understands that hurt people, hurt people and that pain that “does not get transformed, gets transferred” (Richard Rohr).
Accordingly, healed people heal people. If we, as a community, set up RJPs to fail due to insufficient, committed resources, they will fail. If we set them up to succeed as a community, they will succeed just as they have succeeded in other large school districts.
Without relationship-centered approaches that include the potential for transformative healing processes, especially amidst our current crises in mental health, substance use, and a spike in hate/ violent incidents, where would we go without such practices?
Debra Budiani-Saberi, Ph.D. is an MCPS parent, Medical Anthropologist and Facilitator of Facilitator of Mindfulness, Restorative Justice Practices and Conflict Transformation with the DC Peace Team and the Center for Justice and Peace (CJP) of Eastern Mennonite University.
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