Earlier this month, Restorative Justice Initiative (RJI) staff and board members attended the 10th National Association for Community and Restorative Justice (NACRJ) conference. The largest national conference devoted to restorative justice to date, nearly 1,900 attendees gathered at the New Orleans Marriott over four days.
NACRJ has been convening restorative justice practitioners and advocates, as well as those in related fields, every two years in a different U.S. city since 2007. I have been attending the conference since 2015, and RJI has been gathering New Yorkers at the conference since 2019. Over the past 11 years, this conference has served as a benchmark for the growth of the restorative justice movement in New York City:
In 2015, there were fewer than ten conference attendees from NYC in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I vowed to change that.
By the time the 2017 conference rolled around in Oakland, CA, more than ten New Yorkers were presenting breakout sessions and at least twice as many were in attendance.
In 2019, over 60 New Yorkers attended and/or presented (including RJI) at the conference in Denver, CO. 2019 was also the year that RJI began supporting NYC-based RJ practitioners from underrepresented groups to attend the conference. Each year since, we have sponsored a group of 5-10 New Yorkers at the conference. And every year we receive more requests for support than we can meet.
The conference skipped a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, but after Denver, a group of us came together to submit a proposal to host the conference in NYC. Although our proposal wasn’t accepted, we have continued to spread the word about the conference, and to connect and convene New Yorkers engaged in restorative work.
In 2022, the conference resumed in Chicago, IL. That was the first year RJI hosted a reception for New Yorkers at the conference. More than 60 of us gathered to sample Chicago-style pizza (about which there were many strong opinions!) and to share our work in NYC.
In Washington, DC in 2024, we once again hosted an after-hours reception for New Yorkers attending the conference.
This year, New York was one of the top five states with the highest number of attendees at the conference. In fact, we were number two, with 151 New Yorkers registered. More than 70 New Yorkers dropped by our Wednesday evening reception, despite multiple competing events. This is a major milestone, and a testament to the growth of the movement away from punitive practices and toward healing-centered, relational approaches to harm in New York City. We look forward to continued momentum in the years to come, and even greater turnout at the national conference in 2028 (location TBA)!
