Restorative Justice and School

Restorative justice is something that has become more and more prominent within the criminal justice sphere. The use of the concept and practice has emerged in its own right within the juvenile justice realm.

The efficacy of restorative justice when it comes to juvenile offenders is a very important topic because being able to top the patterns of crime, addition and deviance in general is something that should absolutely be stopped and regulated early on in an offender's life due to how hard it becomes to do the same as an offender enters and reenters the justice system over the course of their life.

It is important to create and retain a connection between these young offenders and the victims that suffer at their hands so that the connection is not lost and the offender becomes ambivalent or even hostile about the feelings, suffering and toil that their crimes take on said victims. It is only through the use of empirically proven evidence and history that the offenders can remain with and make peace with their community rather than having their lives lost to institutionalization and a life a crime.

The purpose of this brief fairly brief literature review is to get a sense as to whether restorative justice shows promise based on the data and merits knows up to this point. With that said, findings up to this point have indicated some positive results but this is not completely uniform and consistent across the board given the sample that was used for this report. With that being said, this report has assembled ten different empirical studies and reviews of restorative justice, its efficacy and important aspects of the same.

Restorative Justice for Juveniles The primary question to ask about the concept behind restorative justice, whether it be with juveniles or offenders in general, is just how far one takes the concept before resorting to more severe and punitive punishments based on real-world results, patterns and statistics. Rather than use simple forms of persuasion, this report shall focus on the empirical and historical evidence that exists on the subject.

There some that argue that some people just need a second chance and a little faith while others say that a direct path to punishment is the only sure way. A related but different example would be the use of house arrest, probation or other non-prison punishments rather that incarceration due to the proverbial in the sand that is created and manifested when a person is foisted into the system.

Either way, there would seem to be marked shift away from conventional prison and similar tactics and towards alternative means to both lower crime rates, recidivism rates and incarceration rates. Of course, whether any or all of these approaches work can only be proven and shown through attempting them and them comparing them to the empirical results that come from the more traditional and widely used efforts.

While restorative justice has promise in the eyes of many, it will take ongoing and seeable results to sell it to many criminal justice experts and scholars as a worthwhile alternative to what is done conventionally.

Restorative Justice Something that was alluded to in the introduction is one of the more common and pervasive themes when it comes to restorative justice, and that would be using the tactic as a means to avoid or break away from the pattern of just sending juvenile offenders to jail and just allowing them to become part of the system. Even if some feel that such a method is a viable method, there is the open question as to whether there are better ways.

One city in the United States that is a flashpoint in this regard is Chicago, given the rampant amount of gang and gun crime that pervades the city and greater area. Indeed, restorative justice is seen by many as a superior alternative to incarceration, although that opinion is not unanimous. In the Chicago iteration, there is a focus on victim/offender mediation and peacemaking, overall violence reduction programs and how to handle younger offenders that are guilty of murder.

The topics and tactics in question are compared and contrasted with similar events and patterns in other parts of the world including Canada. The values and community facets in question are obviously mundane to the subject. Overall, there are four primary perceived upsides to the concept and practice of restorative justice. First, restored offenders (regardless of age) are less likely to recidivate. Second, restorative programs are more cost-efficient.

Third, the system is much more effective because there is the direct interaction and involvement of the victims, which is something that is often absent in other situations and criminal justice patterns. Finally, juveniles are much more likely to be rehabilitated and restored and thus they can still live most of their lives in a more moral and crime-free fashion (Tsui, 2014).

One aspect of restorative justice and how it pertains to the young that many people point to is the increased emergence and the associated need to cater to female offenders. For so much of American history, the more violent and nastier offenders that have been dealt with, regardless of the method, are typically males. However, that is clearly starting to change if more recent crime and offender data, both with juveniles and older offenders, are any indication.

According to a United States Department of Justice survey in 2007, the number of younger female offenders was on a sharp rise. As such, any programs and interventions relating to restorative justice, in the eyes of some experts, would have to involve and center on women just as much as they center on men. Even if the overall methodology and patterns of restorative justice are the same with both genders, many people assert that they also have to be a bit different given the differences between people of differing biological genders.

Up to this point, at least some of the results have been quite positive. It has been seen that a great number of female offenders are avoiding have to be adjudicated and relegated to the system due to the more modern and new tactics that are being used.

Rather than being thrown into and lost to the system, these young female offenders are often getting a new lease on life and they become less likely to have a life of crime and joblessness, not to mention a good amount of time behind bars (Davis, 2010). A cornerstone of restorative justice, and something that is in fact fairly controversial, is just how the offenders are presented with the results and consequences of their crimes. There are many that would term this as "shaming".

In Australia, such "shaming" is commonly referred to as RISE, which is short for re-integrative Shaming Experiments. The method is based on Braithwaite's theory of coupling reintegration with shaming. That is, there is a direct confrontation of the offender and imploring on them that they should in no way feel justified or not guilty for what they did to their victims. When manifested and formed in that way, the results would seem to be a little mixed.

It was found that the most direct efforts relating to restorative justice with juveniles was rather hit or miss. However, it was also found that the treatment effects of things such as repaying society, repaying the victim and the overall degree of feeling repentance were sometimes quite positive (Kim & Gerber, 2012). Speaking of efficacy of restorative justice and gauging the same, one way to see if it works or not comes down to one thing, that being recidivism.

Indeed, if a restorative justice program has no apparent positive effect on whether a person engages in crime again after the restorative justice efforts are levied, then it immediately comes into question whether such programs are worth the time and effort. With that in mind, there have been studies that have looked at that precisely and the results, even if sometimes mixed, have largely been positive.

Indeed, a study in 2007 by Rodriguez found that those juveniles that participated in restorative justice programs were clearly less likely to recidivate than those that were put through the normal criminal justice pathways for juveniles, whether it be juvenile hall or being charged as adults. That being said, it was clear that the aforementioned biological sex of the offender as well as the nature of the crimes done prior had a lot to do with whether there were future offenses and what those offenses happened to be.

In other words, the patterns of recidivism could and would be different for men and women and could also be different based on whether the prior crimes were robbery, theft, vandalism or even rape or murder. Indeed, there are clear patterns that show that female offenders and those with lesser prior crime history are much more likely to have less recidivism than male offenders or those with more protracted crimes or criminal histories in general.

Many scholars assert that this speaks to the need to tailor the approach of restorative justice based on the nature of the prior offenses and the biological sex of the offender involved. In other words, men and women (or boys and girls) will have to be treated in different manners and violent versus non-violent offenders will have to be treated differently, it would seem (Rodriguez, 2007).

One realm and part of the juvenile restorative justice paradigm that is commonly asserted as being mundane or important to the situation would be the fact that so many of the offenders in question are (or should be) in school, whether it be elementary school, middle school or high school. Even in a structured environment like a school, using harsher and "zero tolerance" policies where severe offenses lead to immediate and permanent separation or punishment is seen as less than wise by many experts.

These same experts assert that children in school situations tend to be much more correctable and moldable than adults who are more set in their ways and that perhaps should be treated in a harsher and more punitive way. At the same time, the fact that juvenile offenders in restorative justice programs are directly and intentionally faced with the consequences and victims of their crimes and are similarly coerced to pay restitution to the same is a linchpin of the entire process.

Any sort of criminal or antisocial behavior is likely going to be perceived as wrong and experts assert that it is important to implore upon the children engaging in the same to break out of that pattern and get on the right track before they truly make a mess of their lives. Even with the expert-stated common sense and importance of all of this, there are indeed both promises and pitfalls when it comes to more modern approaches.

First, it is concerning to criminal justice and school officials that restitution is becoming a common part of the parlance of school policy documents when it was relegated in the past to criminal justice and similar situations. Even so, restitution in a restorative justice and school context is necessarily different. Rather than it just being an order of the court as levied against the criminal, the juvenile offender is expected to be part of the planning process rather than just having the plan foisted on them.

In the end, the common dual priority in question when it comes to restorative justice is to both make the victim whole while at the same time coaching and correcting the offender so that they do not engage in the behavior again. Examples of restitution and "punishments" in the juvenile restorative justice sense would include writing letters of apology to the mother of the victim, writing letters of apology teachers, a self-imposed grounding for a longer period of time (e.g.

a month), a contract being drawn up with the parents of the offender that dictates what behaviors will be demanded and required and an agreement to do things chores and other positive habits, rather than remaining within or regressing into what led to the problems in the first place (Fields) Another layer of restorative justice that many scholars and experts point to is that a lot of the victims of these juvenile offenders are themselves juveniles.

Even if there are perceived positive effects from what restorative justice has to offer in terms of efficacy and outcomes, it is important to look at the age of the offender and how that informs and affects the situation. One study authored in 2011 did precisely that. Gal and Moyal (2011) used ANCOVA-style statistical research to look at this precise question. An interesting dichotomy was found.

When it came to adult victims, the use of the restorative justice process rather than prison time and other more conventional punishments was a good thing in the eyes of said adult victims. In other words, they were more in favor of the restorative justice methodology and its outcomes as compared to that of conventional punishments and the use of prison time. In contrast, the opposite was true of juveniles. They actually prefer the more conventional punishments including prison and forced restitution with little to no feedback.

This could absolutely be a function of maturity and age and perhaps the children involved are not fully versed on why the restorative justice method is being used instead. Through education and explanation over time, perhaps those divergent opinions will go away.

Further, if restorative justice is something that is better for society and that lowers recidivism in the long run, the divergent opinions of juveniles, while unfortunate, are not enough to not use the method as a means to lower crime and to save the youth (or even adults) that stray. The one caveat to that, of course, would be more violent and depraved crimes like rape and murder, regardless of the age of the offender (Gal & Moyal, 2011).

Even with the idea and acceptance that restorative justice is at least one alternative that could and should be used for juvenile offenders, there are differing opinions and approaches in terms of how it should be done and why. Many hold this to be true when comparing one country to another. However, it is also true when comparing states or provinces within the same country. Indeed, both Texas and Colorado have restorative justice frameworks in their states.

However, experts are quick to point out that the manner in which they are manifested and used is quite different when comparing them side by side in any meaningful way. Even the underpinning legislation and debate in the respective state legislatures was quite different in many ways.

What is encouraging to those same experts, however, is that there seems to be less focus on partisanship and economic concerns and more focus on reducing crime in ways that, while not conventional or pervasive at this time, show promise in terms of the results that are garnered from using these new and more modern tactics (Silva, 2017). Something that should build on an earlier source is the long-term effects of using restorative justice as an intervention. Of course, recidivism is one of the main metrics that.