Alameda County pioneers restorative justice for youth
June 16, 2009
From Annette Fuentes’ article in New America Media: BERKELEY. Members of the circle arrived one by one on a recent Friday evening at the Berkeley home of Leavy Perkins. She is the great grandmother of Dante Green, and had raised the young man from infancy. Green, 18, was the reason...
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Dan Van Ness: New Hampshire legislature adopts important new victim rights bills
June 15, 2009
By Dan Van Ness According to Susannah Sheffer, author of the blog maintained by Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR). the New Hampshire legislature has just adopted several important bills to expand the rights of crime victims in that state. These have now gone to the...
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Seeking forgiveness key in many faiths
June 15, 2009
From Steven Spearie’s article in NorwichBulletin.com: Pope John Paul might have been subscribing to the most basic, but hardly the easiest, of Christian mandates: If you want to be right with God, you have to forgive others. Religious leaders and others say forgiveness is within...
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The legacy of clergy sexual abuse: A cry for restorative justice
June 15, 2009
I was coming off a holiday when I read a news article entitled Legacy of Irish Abuse Revealed (Reuters; May 21, 2009) detailing decades of sexual abuse of children in Ireland by clergy dating from the 1930s to the 1990s. I do not think there is one person active in the restorative...
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Investing in restorative justice
June 6, 2009
In order to serve their community’s needs, most of Colorado’s local restorative justice programs have to raise money beyond whatever government support they may receive. Can you imagine if the corrections department had to do bake sales and fashion shows to afford to run their...
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Jamaica launches restorative and community justice programme in four violent-prone areas
June 6, 2009
From the news story in the Jamaica Observer: Teachers, religious and business leaders, justices of the peace and community leaders will be trained at the Justice Training Institute in the administration of the programme. Some 150 persons, who are to participate in the pilot programme, started...
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America’s prisons: Is there hope?
June 6, 2009
In November 2008, I visited the San Bruno jail and sat in on an RSVP session. A group counselor and about fifteen inmates sat on plastic chairs in a semicircle, while a white twenty-eight-year-old bank robber named Don described a fight he had been involved in eight years earlier. While the...
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Shame and restorative justice
June 6, 2009
Perhaps the most common use of shame regarding crime involves the government or other officials shaming rule-breakers as a form of punishment. The logic of rational choice theory suggests that threatened shame should increase the costs of crime and thus deter future crime. Thus shame gets...
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Talking cure: Community Conferencing Center uses restorative justice techniques to deal with crime in Baltimore
June 6, 2009
From the Baltimore City Paper article by Erin Sullivan: Sometimes it can get a little tense. But that’s part of what makes community conferencing so useful and successful, according to Abramson. In a world where people are encouraged to bottle up their feelings, she says, the need to...
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South Africa’s whites and restorative justice
June 6, 2009
From Susan Anderson’s post on The Loop: White perpetrators of injustice and violence — and blacks involved in racial violence – were encouraged to come before the Commission. But, Commission Chair Tutu said, “It is something of a pity that, by and large, the...
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Restorative justice and child sex offences: The theory and the practice.
June 6, 2009
From Annie Cossins’ article in the British Journal of Criminology: By looking closely at the SAAS conferencing model, this article has shown that the ideal of empowering victims and prioritizing victims ’ needs was not necessarily achieved, since: victims had no say about whether...
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Howard Zehr on Partial Justice
June 6, 2009
From Howard Zehr’s blog: While we should always aim to be as restorative as possible, it is important to acknowledge that full restorative justice is not always achievable. Moreover, good can come of those approaches that seem incomplete… . A major concern, however, is...
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New Child Justice Act in South Africa
June 3, 2009
According to the opening paragraph, one objective of the new Child Justice Act is to “entrench the notion of restorative justice in the criminal justice system in respect of children who are in conflict with the law.†The legislation goes on to define restorative justice as:...
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Book Review: Youth Justice in Practice, Making a Difference
June 2, 2009
Youth Justice in Practice, Making a Difference, by Bill Whyte Policy Press Social Work in Practice Series Great Britain 2009, 240 pages, paperback The Social Work Practice series from the Policy Press in the U.K. now...
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Improving School Climate: Findings from Schools Implementing Restorative Practices
May 30, 2009
The booklet includes brief portraits of each school or district, focusing on how school climate has changed due to restorative practices, as well as data on reductions in school violence, discipline problems, suspensions and expulsions/exclusions. Download the booklet edited by Sharon...
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