“Conflict is not a problem that needs solving but a phenomenon that needs understanding.”
~Dominic Barter
[more restorative justice quotes]
What is Restorative Justice?
Restorative Justice is a roughly 40-year international movement consisting of a variety of different restorative practices from all over the world, many of which have indigenous roots. While the specifics vary from practice to practice, at the heart of it, restorative practices provide an alternative (or additional) approach to the punitive systems that currently dominate most Western mainstream societies’ approach to crime and conflict.
Rather than focusing on assigning blame and administering punishment, restorative practices typically bring together the parties involved and impacted by what happened for the purpose of mutual understanding (of what happened and the harm that occurred) and working together to fix the harm and, if necessary, restore the relationships.
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What are Restorative Circles?
Restorative Circles are a specific restorative practice developed in the favelas of Brazil by Dominic Barter and his associates. According to Barter, a Restorative Circle is a community process for supporting those in conflict. It brings together (within a chosen systemic context) the three parties to a conflict:
(1) those whose action(s) produced harm
(2) those directly targeted by the harmful action(s) and
(3) the community members who may have created conditions for the harm to have happened and/or who feel impacted by the conflict or its consequences.Restorative Circles are facilitated by circle-keepers or facilitators who ideally come directly from the community in which the act occurred. They commit to serving the emergent wisdom of the participants through their willingness to offer agreed upon questions and to track the co-creation of meaning and action by those present. Participants invite each other and attend voluntarily. The dialogue process used is shared openly with all participants. The process ends when actions have been found that bring mutual benefit that nurtures the inherent integrity of all those involved in the conflict. Restorative Circles are facilitated in three stages that arise in an approximate sequence and identify the key factors in the conflict, reach agreements on next steps, and evaluate the results. As circles form, they invite shared power, mutual understanding and self-responsibility within community.
For those interested in empirical outcomes, they can find them in the NESTA Report on Radical Efficiency (RC coverage, including evaluation data from Brazil, is on pages 1-4, 8, 19 and 41-43) as well as in the Ortega et al (2016) article below.
Below are several articles I've written or co-written about Restorative Justice (with a focus on Restorative Circles). The Psychology Today article and the Peace Profile will be most accessible to those who are first coming to this work, while the one by Ortega et al is most technical.
- Restorative Justice in Schools: Theory, Implementation, and Realistic Expectations (Lyubansky & Barter, 2019)
- Peace Profile: Dominic Barter (Lyubansky, 2017)
- Outcomes of a Restorative Circles Program in a High School Setting (Ortega, Lyubansky, et al., 2016)
- Challenging Power Dynamics in Restorative Justice (Lyubansky & Shpungin, 2015)
- Restorative Justice for Trayvon Martin (Lyubansky, 2013)
- A Restorative Approach to Racial Conflict (Lyubansky & Barter, 2011)
- Our Justice System Requires Us To Punish Wrongdoers. What If There Were a Better Way? (Lyubansky, 2010, Psych Today)
Links to learn more
- Restorative Justice Resources Curated collection of articles, manuals, podcasts, and videos about restorative justice.
- Restorative Circles Archives We've compiled links to every piece of writing and online RC resource we know about.
- Restorative Circles Homepage This is the official RC website, maintained by Dominic Barter.