More Communities Exploring Restorative Justice for Youth - The Annie E. Casey Foundation

More Communities Exploring Restorative Justice for Youth

Posted May 24, 2022
By the Annie E. Casey Foundation
Young black man is similing and looking right at the camera.

Juve­nile jus­tice juris­dic­tions across the nation — in California’s Los Ange­les and Alame­da coun­ties, Philadel­phia and David­son coun­ty in Ten­nessee — are using restora­tive jus­tice to divert youth who have caused harm. The approach, which is gain­ing trac­tion in schools, com­mu­ni­ties and sys­tems, trades court pro­ceed­ings for com­mu­ni­ty-based responses.

Restora­tive Jus­tice Is an Emerg­ing Movement

Impact Jus­tice, a grantee of the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion, is work­ing to grow the net­work of jus­tice advo­cates, com­mu­ni­ty-based prac­ti­tion­ers and sys­tem part­ners who are com­mit­ted to apply­ing restora­tive jus­tice prac­tices in youth justice.

It’s encour­ag­ing to see more com­mu­ni­ties tak­ing up the work of shift­ing mind­sets and build­ing part­ner­ships to cre­ate sys­tems that affirm that young peo­ple can grow through their mis­takes with guid­ance and sup­port,” says Liane Rozzell, a senior pol­i­cy asso­ciate with the Casey Foundation.

Restora­tive jus­tice sup­ports reha­bil­i­ta­tion by focus­ing on account­abil­i­ty, heal­ing and repair­ing harms. A com­po­nent of this approach, called restora­tive jus­tice con­fer­enc­ing, con­nects the per­son who was harmed with the young per­son respon­si­ble for exact­ing harm. These par­tic­i­pants, along with facil­i­ta­tors and oth­er sup­port­ers, work to reach a con­sen­sus on how to repair the harm caused. Young peo­ple deserve oppor­tu­ni­ties to real­ize their poten­tial, even when they make seri­ous mis­takes,” Rozzell explains. Those they have harmed also deserve to have their needs met.”

Young peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in restora­tive jus­tice pro­grams are less like­ly to reof­fend rel­a­tive to their coun­ter­parts in the court sys­tem, accord­ing to a 2021 Depart­ment of Jus­tice lit­er­a­ture review. Peo­ple who expe­ri­enced harm also have good things to say about the approach, as indi­cat­ed in an eval­u­a­tion of a com­mu­ni­ty-based restora­tive jus­tice pro­gram in Alame­da Coun­ty — home to Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia. The eval­u­a­tion found that 91% of par­tic­i­pants who had expe­ri­enced harm report­ed being sat­is­fied with the process.

Account­abil­i­ty Dif­fers From Punishment

Peo­ple can con­fuse account­abil­i­ty and pun­ish­ment, but they are not the same,” says Rozzell.

Account­abil­i­ty, accord­ing to restora­tive jus­tice prac­ti­tion­ers, involves tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for your actions; acknowl­edg­ing your impact; express­ing remorse; col­lab­o­rat­ing with those harmed to repair the wrong and not repeat­ing sim­i­lar harms.

An Exam­ple of Restora­tive Jus­tice in Practice 

I feel like every per­son harmed — and every young per­son respon­si­ble for harm — should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to know there’s a restora­tive jus­tice process avail­able to them,” says Travis Clay­brooks. A for­mer Nashville police offi­cer, Clay­brooks now serves as the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Raphah Insti­tute, an Impact Jus­tice part­ner in Nashville. His com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tion facil­i­tates restora­tive jus­tice con­fer­ences for cas­es referred by court or law enforce­ment partners.

In one of these cas­es, a 14-year-old boy was involved in a car acci­dent that end­ed the life of a 79-year-old hus­band and father. Accord­ing to Clay­brooks, the deceased man’s fam­i­ly did not want a harsh pun­ish­ment for the boy. Even in their deep grief, the fam­i­ly kept say­ing that they did not want that child to go to prison but they did want some­thing to be done.”

What’s more, the teen and his fam­i­ly want­ed a way to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for what he had done while also sup­port­ing the sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly as they sought to heal. Every­one involved in the case agreed to the lengthy process of facil­i­ta­tion and con­fer­enc­ing instead of a lengthy court battle.

He’s a good kid who made a very poor deci­sion, and he knew that own­ing up to it was the right thing to do,” Clay­brooks explains. At the same time, the only way the fam­i­ly would get clo­sure and heal­ing in this sit­u­a­tion was through a restora­tive jus­tice process.”

Casey Foun­da­tion Resources to Learn More About Restora­tive Justice

  • In 2021, Casey host­ed two webi­na­rs on how com­mu­ni­ties can use restora­tive jus­tice as a con­struc­tive and more equi­table response when young peo­ple break the law and cause harm to oth­ers. The webi­na­rs are geared toward youth jus­tice prac­ti­tion­ers, racial jus­tice advo­cates and lead­ers of youth-ori­en­t­ed com­­mu­ni­­ty-based organizations.
  • Casey has also issued a brief that presents the research case for juris­dic­tions to sig­nif­i­cant­ly divert young peo­ple from courts to into com­mu­ni­ty-based respons­es. Arrest­ing young peo­ple and for­mal­ly pro­cess­ing their cas­es in juve­nile court sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es their like­li­hood of sub­se­quent arrests while reduc­ing their odds of future suc­cess in school and employ­ment, the evi­dence suggests.