Colorizing Restorative Justice

In Colorizing Restorative Justice, noted practitioners in restorative justice / practices offer accounts of their own experiences and critical analyses, as the book explores issues of race and marginalization within the field. The book illuminates how racism and colonization show up in the movement and includes thought-provoking questions to help readers fully process the articles.

In our era of mass incarceration, gun violence, and Black Lives Matters, a handbook showing how racial justice and restorative justice can transform the African-American experience in America. This timely work will inform scholars and practitioners on the subjects of pervasive racial inequity and the healing offered by restorative justice practices. Addressing the intersectionality of race and the US criminal justice system, social activist Fania E. Davis explores how restorative justice has the capacity to disrupt patterns of mass incarceration through effective, equitable, and transformative approaches. Eager to break the still-pervasive, centuries-long cycles of racial prejudice and trauma in America, Davis unites the racial justice and restorative justice movements, aspiring to increase awareness of deep-seated problems as well as positive action toward change. Davis highlights real restorative justice initiatives that function from a racial justice perspective; these programs are utilized in schools, justice systems, and communities, intentionally seeking to ameliorate racial disparities and systemic inequities. Chapters include: Chapter 1: The Journey to Racial Justice and Restorative Justice Chapter 2: Ubuntu: The Indigenous Ethos of Restorative Justice Chapter 3: Integrating Racial Justice and Restorative Justice Chapter 4: Race, Restorative Justice, and Schools Chapter 5: Restorative Justice and Transforming Mass Incarceration Chapter 6: Toward a Racial Reckoning: Imagining a Truth Process for Police Violence Chapter 7: A Way Forward She looks at initiatives that strive to address the historical harms against African Americans throughout the nation. This newest addition the Justice and Peacebuilding series is a much needed and long overdue examination of the issue of race in America as well as a beacon of hope as we learn to work together to repair damage, change perspectives, and strive to do better.

Restorative justice represents “a paradigm shift in the way Americans conceptualize and administer punishment,” says author Maisha T. Winn, from a focus on crime to a focus on harm, including the needs of both those who were harmed and those who caused it. Her book, Justice on Both Sides, provides an urgently needed, comprehensive account of the value of restorative justice and how contemporary schools can implement effective practices to address inequalities associated with race, class, and gender. Winn, a restorative justice practitioner and scholar, draws on her extensive experience as a coach to school leaders and teachers to show how indispensable restorative justice is in understanding and addressing the educational needs of students, particularly disadvantaged youth. Justice on Both Sides makes a major contribution by demonstrating how this actually works in schools and how it can be integrated into a range of educational settings. It also emphasizes how language and labeling must be addressed in any fruitful restorative effort. Ultimately, Winn makes the case for restorative justice as a crucial answer, at least in part, to the unequal practices and opportunities in American schools.

We are living in a world where power abuse has become the new norm, as well as the biggest, silent driver of persistent inequalities, racism and human rights violations. The COVID-19 socio-economic consequences can only be compared with those that followed World War II. As humanity is getting to grips with them, this timely book challenges current thinking, while creating a much needed normative and practical framework for revealing and challenging the power structures that feed our subconscious feelings of despair and defeatism. Structured around the four concepts of power, race, justice and restorative justice, the book uses empirical new data and normative analysis to reconstruct the way we prevent power abuse and harm at the inter-personal, inter-community and international levels. This book offers new lenses, which allow us to view power, race and justice in a modern reality where communities have been silenced, but through restorative justice are gaining voice. The book is enriched with case studies written by survivors, practitioners and those with direct experiences of power abuse and inequality. Through robust research methodologies, Gavrielides’s new monograph reveals new forms of slavery, while creating a new, philosophical framework for restorative punishment through the acknowledgement of pain and the use of catharsis for internal transformation and individual empowerment. This is a powerful and timely book that generates much needed hope. Through a multi-disciplinary dialogue that uses philosophy and critical theory, social sciences, criminology, law, psychology and human rights, the book opens new avenues for practitioners, researchers and policy makers internationally.

This book provides a comprehensive and authoritative account and analysis of restorative justice, one of the most rapidly growing phenomena in the field of criminology and justice studies. This book aims to meet the need for a comprehensive, reliable and accessible overview of the subject. It draws together leading authorities on the subject from around the world in order to: elucidate and discuss the key concepts and principles of restorative justice explain how the campaign for restorative justice arose and developed into the influential social movement it is today describe the variety of restorative justice practices, explain how they have developed in various places and contexts, and critically examine their rationales and effects identify and examine key tensions and issues within the restorative justice movement brings a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives to bear upon the understanding and assessment of restorative justice. The Handbook of Restorative Justice is essential reading for students and practitioners in the field.

The legitimacy and performance of the traditional criminal justice system is the subject of intense scrutiny as the world economic crisis continues to put pressure on governments to cut the costs of the criminal justice system. This volume brings together the leading work on restorative justice to achieve two objectives: to construct a comprehensive and up-to-date conceptual framework for restorative justice suitable even for newcomers; and to challenge the barriers of restorative justice in the hope of taking its theory and practice a step further. The selected articles start by answering some fundamental questions about restorative justice regarding its historical and philosophical origins, and challenge the concept by bringing into the debate the human rights and equality discourses. Also included is material based on empirical testing of restorative justice claims especially those impacting on reoffending rates, victim satisfaction and reintegration. The volume concludes with a critique of restorative justice as well as with analytical thinking that aims to push its barriers. It is hoped that the investigations offered by this volume not only offer hope for a better system for abolitionists and reformists, but also new and convincing evidence to persuade the sceptics in the debate over restorative justice.

The award-winning “radically original” (The Atlantic) restorative justice leader, whose work the Washington Post has called “totally sensible and totally revolutionary,” grapples with the problem of violent crime in the movement for prison abolition A National Book Foundation Literature for Justice honoree A Kirkus “Best Book of 2019 to Fight Racism and Xenophobia” Winner of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Journalism Award Finalist for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice In a book Democracy Now! calls a “complete overhaul of the way we’ve been taught to think about crime, punishment, and justice,” Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice and renowned expert on violence, offers pragmatic solutions that take the place of prison, meeting the needs of survivors and creating pathways for people who have committed violence to repair harm. Critically, Sered argues that reckoning is owed not only on the part of individuals who have caused violence, but also by our nation for its overreliance on incarceration to produce safety—at a great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy. Although over half the people incarcerated in America today have committed violent offenses, the focus of reformers has been almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Called “innovative” and “truly remarkable” by The Atlantic and “a top-notch entry into the burgeoning incarceration debate” by Kirkus Reviews, Sered’s Until We Reckon argues with searing force and clarity that our communities are safer the less we rely on prisons and jails as a solution for wrongdoing. Sered asks us to reconsider the purposes of incarceration and argues persuasively that the needs of survivors of violent crime are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends in ways that are meaningful to those they have hurt—none of which happens in the context of a criminal trial or a prison sentence.