Between Town and Gown: The Rise and Fall of Restorative Justice on Boulder’s University Hill

Source: (2003) Utah Law Review. 2003(1): 91-136. University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Downloaded 13 October 2003.

A professor of law, Thomas Russell writes of his experiences living and working in the city of Boulder, Colorado, location of the University of Colorado, where he taught as a visiting professor for a period. During the eighteen months of living in Boulder, he helped organize a neighborhood-driven restorative justice program. His focus in this article, then, is not on theory but on personal experience as a community member involved in a restorative justice initiative. Based concretely on his experience, he describes the Boulder and University of Colorado socio-economic contexts, issues that adversely affected community safety and quality of life, stakeholders in the community, community organizing and restorative techniques, and serious challenges to efforts to repair harm to the community.