Restorative Justice on PBS

One of the students who in my SSU class on Restorative Justice called me today and mentioned that she had recently watched an episode of Masterpiece Theater in which Restorative Justice played a part. It is in the Inspector Lewis Series; the episode is called “The Point of Vanishing. Turns out you can watch it [...]

Juvenile Offender Sentencing to be Reviewed Nov 9 by US Supreme Court

Should juvenile offenders be sentenced to life in prison without parole? The US Supreme Court will be looking at this issue soon. Here’s an opinion written by former Republican senator Alan Simpson, of Wyoming–also a former juvenile offender. What’s your opinion? Take the poll, and if you feel moved please add a comment [...]

Mean Girls: More on Cyberbullying

Hank Flannery, a longtime friend of our agency, forwarded me this article on cyberbullying, published months ago in the Press Democrat. It highlights the “Mean girls” phenomenon.
 

Restorative Schools action by SF School Board

Lots of buzz lately about San Francisco School’s mandating expanded use of alternatives to suspension and expulsion at all district schools. Restorative Justice and related practices are included. I did a google search on “San Francisco Schools Restorative Justice” and quite a few articles were returned. Here’s one to get you started.
My dedicated readers will [...]

Mainstream press for restorative justice

A brief article appeared in this weekend’s Parade Magazine. Read at their website here.
Interesting to see how well a journalist can write an effective elevator statement for restorative justice–which is what this article amounts to (you’ll read it in under a minute). Also interesting to see, yet again, the same success data appear that we [...]

Training Opportunity

Dominic Barter will be giving some trainings in Oakland in November, hosted by Bay Area Non-Violent Communications Network. It’s a great opportunity to be trained by one of today’s leading innovators in restorative justice. I’ve found Dominic’s model to be tremendously helpful.  More info here.

Justice search at Harper’s Index

I’m a big fan of Harper’s magazine, and the Index one of the features I especially appreciate. I just noticed that entire archives of the Harpers Index are searchable by keyword. So I did a search on the keyword “Justice.” Try it here. Since justice is a cornerstone not just of our work here at [...]

Education: Let’s get the question right

What if our approach to educating children and adolescents is all wrong? I mean, way out of the ballpark wrong.
That’s a rhetorical question.
Because of course we’re doing it all wrong. But we’ve been doing it all wrong for so long we no longer even have a sense of the right questions to ask.
Everywhere the discussion [...]

A young man’s leadership creates a crisis and leads to a circle

I had a conversation this morning with a young man named Marcos who is on the board of one of our local non-profits. When he was in elementary school, Marcos was selected to be bussed to school in a neighboring town. It was, he said, part of an integration effort. He is Latino; his parents [...]

Annie’s moving on

My first contact with Restorative Resources was a phone call from our office manager, Annie Hughes. It was one of those calls where you could hear the person on the other end smiling; where, when the call is over, you feel like you just spoke with someone who was sincerely supportive and appreciative.
That’s Annie. In [...]