Web Resources
National Resources
Domestic Violence Safe Dialogue
At DVSD, their mission is to stop the cycle of domestic violence by facilitating safe, supervised conversations between survivors and offenders who have never met before, which help both parties foster transformative change inside themselves as well as others.
Georgia State University’s Restorative Justice Clearing House
The Restorative Justice Clearing House at Georgia State University offers a list of all state restorative justice statutes and other resources.
Impact Justice Restorative Justice Project
Impact Justice Restorative Justice Project encourages constructive responses to wrongdoing. It brings those who have harmed, their victims, and affected community members into processes that repair harms and rebuild relationships. At its best, restorative justice produces consensus-based plans through face-to-face dialogues that meet victim-identified needs while supporting the positive development of those who’ve harmed. This can take many forms, most notably community conferencing models and circle processes.
National Association of Community and Restorative Justice
NACRJ serves as the parent organization for the biannual National Conference on Restorative Justice and provides members with information and resources applicable to restorative and community justice theory and practice.
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
NCCD is leading efforts to institutionalize restorative justice alternatives to juvenile and adult incarceration and zero-tolerance school discipline policies across California and the nation.
Center for Restorative Justice at the University of San Diego
The Center’s website has additional resources related to implementing restorative justice on college and university campuses, RJ and campus sexual harm (PRISM), restorative justice in education for health professions and an RJ network of Catholic campuses. Also, see books and articles by David R. Karp.
Student Peace Alliance
The Student Peace Alliance has compiled a list of resources including restorative justice success stories from individual schools and districts around the country
The Healing Justice Project
Healing Justice seeks to provide support, reconciliation, and recovery in cases involving exoneration. To that end, they host restorative justice events in exoneration cases and help organize the provision of direct support and services to the innocent, crime victims, and their families during and after exoneration.
The Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue at the University of Texas, Austin
The Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue at the University of Texas School of Social Work seeks to build a national mindset that embraces restorative justice principles. Its mission is to advance meaningful accountability, victim healing and community safety through the use of restorative justice solutions to repair the harm related to conflict, crime and victimization.
University of Minnesota Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking
The Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota Duluth provides scholarly research, instructional videos, training, program development consultation and more.
Schools
Minnesota Department of Education
The Minnesota Department of Education website contains links to resources such as: activities for RJ trainers, an administrator’s RP checklist, a restorative interventions toolkit for facilitators, videos and more.
Oakland Unified School District
Restorative Justice (RJ) is a set of principles and practices employed in the Oakland Unified School District to build community and respond to student misconduct, with the goals of repairing harm and restoring relationships between those impacted. The RJ program in OUSD pilots a three-tiered model of prevention/ intervention/ supported reentry in response to conflict/harm.
Resources for Youth Activism
This resource document was put together by SEE, YRJ and Youth Summit Youth Leaders. It is designed to support youth and communities across our city to unpack the trauma, anxiety, and confusion that we are all sitting with in regards to current events.
Safer Saner Schools
The Safer Saner Schools’ website offers insights on the whole-school change model for implementing restorative practices in schools, as well as a list of research and reports on its efficacy.
An Alternative To Suspension And Expulsion: ‘Circle Up!’
Oakland Unified, one of California’s largest districts, has been a national leader in expanding restorative justice. At Edna Brewer Middle School, the fact that students are taking the lead — that so many want to be part of this effort — shows that it’s starting to take root.
International
Prison Fellowship International’s Centre for Justice and Reconciliation
Prison Fellowship has compiled a comprehensive online database of articles and research on restorative justice organized by topic and area of interest.
The European Forum for Restorative Justice
The European Forum for Restorative Justice website includes a database of academic research reports.
Earth Restorative Justice: Restorative approaches to ecological harms
The Earth Restorative Justice website explores if Restorative Justice can play a role in healing ecological harms.
Webinars
Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice
The Zehr Institute hosts a series of ongoing webinars with experts from around the world about many different aspects of restorative justice. All of the archives are available to view online.
Restorative Justice: Imagining a New Future for Criminal Law in NYC Panel Discussion
Features a recording of the virtual panel discussion with the same name, in addition to featured and additional organizations and resources.
Research and Reports
Seeding Generations: New Strategies Towards Services for People who Abuse
Services for people who cause harm are a crucial part of our work to support survivors, foster healthful relationships and communities, and end violence. This blueprint is the product of a year-long process led by Purvi Shah, independent consultant to NYC’s Blueprint for Abusive Partner Intervention and hosted by the Center for Court Innovation.
Safe and Supportive Schools: A Plan to Improve School Climate and Safety in NYC
The Office of the Comptroller Scott M. Stringer issued this report in June 2018 that presents a review of current data related to school safety in New York City, and draws a series of holistic recommendations on how to make NYC schools healthier and more secure. The report is based on the premise that “school safety,” as a goal, extends beyond protecting children from external threats, and must include universal school-based mental health services, anti-bullying programs, and school disciplinary systems that students and teachers alike perceive as fair. Recommendations from the Office of the Comptroller include adopting and sustaining funding for restorative justice initiatives for a minimum three-year implementation period, and expand the initiative’s reach to more schools.
Beyond the Mandate Continuing the Conversation: Report of the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission
This TRC focused on what has happened to Wabanaki children and families between 1978, when the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed, and now. It’s specifically centered on the State of Maine’s child welfare practices.
The $746 Million A Year School-to-Prison Pipeline
This report, released by the Center for Popular Democracy and Urban Youth Collaborative, reveals the staggering yearly economic impact of the school-to-prison pipeline in New York City, $746.8 million. In addition, it presents a bold “Young People’s School Justice Agenda,” which calls on the City to divest from over-policing young people, and invest in supportive programs and opportunities for students to thrive. The young people who are most at risk of harm due to harsh policing and disciplinary policies are uniquely situated to lead the dialogue about developing truly safe and equitable learning environments.
Lessons in Racial Justice and Movement Building: Dismantling the School-to-Prison-Pipeline in Colorado and Nationally
This report details how a multiracial grassroots organizing effort led by youth of color mobilized against the School-to-Prison-Pipeline and brought restorative justice to Denver public schools and beyond.
Restorative Community Conferencing: A Study of Community Works West’s Restorative Justice Youth Diversion Program in Alameda County
This report, written by Impact Justice’s Restorative Justice Project, explores a California Restorative Community Conferencing program, which currently diverts over 100 youth per year away from the juvenile legal system. Restorative Community Conferencing (RCC) is a process for resolving harm through an organized, facilitated dialogue in which young people, with the support of family and community members, meet with their crime victims to create a plan to repair the harm caused by their offense.
Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Break Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration
In this report author Danielle Sered, Director of Common Justice, makes the case that it is essential to reduce violence and incarceration, and that a new vision for justice must address violence in its community and historical contexts in a way that honors all crime survivors and insists on racial equity.
Chicago Public Schools Suspensions and Expulsions Reduction Project Update
Implementation of restorative practices is a crucial component of the Chicago Public Schools Suspensions and Expulsions Reduction Project (SERP).
Building Safe, Supportive and Restorative School Communities in New York City
This case study compiled by the Dignity in Schools Campaign highlights the positive impact of restorative approaches to school discipline in four New York City public schools.
Justifying Restorative Justice
This paper compares the predominating Western theories of punishment – retributivism and utilitarianism – to the basic values of restorative justice.
Outcomes of a Restorative Circles Program in a High School Setting
This study uses qualitative interviews to identify the benefits and downsides associated with school-based restorative practices, from the perspective of both the adults and the students in an urban high school in Virginia where over 90% of students are African American and over 75% are eligible for free/reduced lunch.
Power in Partnerships: Building Connections at the Intersections of Racial Justice and LGBTQ Movements to End the School-to-Prison Pipeline
This report is intended as a resource for all racial justice and LGBTQ groups seeking to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. It includes the latest information on how the school-to-prison pipeline affects youth of color and LGBTQ youth, and engages in a candid discussion of barriers to collaboration, while promoting best practices.
Improving School Climate: Findings from Schools Implementing Restorative Practices
This report is composed of excerpts from articles, reports and disciplinary data from individual schools and school districts implementing restorative practices. This data taken together with “in their own words” reports, makes clear that restorative practices are having a positive effect on the lives of many students and are changing the climate of many schools.
Restorative Justice: The Evidence
Restorative Justice: The Evidence is a comprehensive meta-analysis from several studies conducted in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Restorative Justice in U.S. Schools: A Research Review
The WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center highlights the rigorous research and evaluation work that WestEd researchers are conducting in the areas of school safety, violence and crime prevention, juvenile and criminal justice, and public health. A primary goal of the Center is to become a trusted source of evidence on the effects of policies and programs in these areas.
Restorative Justice in U.S. Schools: Practitioners’ Perspectives
This report provides an overview of how educators are integrating restorative justice into their schools.
The Starts and Stumbles of Restorative Justice in Education: Where Do We Go from Here?
This policy brief from the National Education Policy Center summarizes research on restorative initiatives, with a focus on implementation and outcomes in U.S. schools.
Environmental Justice: Restoring the future
The European Forum for Restorative Justice report contains reflections on on how restorative justice can contribute to environmental justice, as well as an overview of experiences in restorative environmental justice and examples of projects from activists and artists around environmental justice.
Restorative Approaches to Address Intimate Partner Violence: A New York City Blueprint
Building on years of research and community conversations, nationally and in New York City, this report outlines pathways for developing restorative and community-based approaches to intimate partner violence in New York City, in order to offer survivors, along with their families and communities, more options outside of the legal system to address the harm in their lives.
The Legalization of Restorative Justice: A Fifty-State Empirical Analysis
Drawing on data from an original 50-state analysis, this Article argues that the current degree of legal internalization of restorative justice indicates the emergence of a new legal norm. These findings call for a critical reexamination of current perceptions of restorative justice normatively and empirically.