The original design of zero-tolerance policies was meant to support school safety through an anti-drug and violence campaign but in the years following their implementation, school districts have employed them repeatedly without merit. Exclusionary practices have become controversial, leading to high rates of recidivism, imbalanced implementation toward minority groups, and the loss of learning while suspended or expelled. Just as effective educators respond and intervene to instructional practices that are not proving successful, an overhaul of disciplinary practices was necessary for academic and emotional health. Restorative practices have emerged in recent years as an alternative process to the antiquated system of exclusionary measures. The previously used disciplinary structure inhibited the education of students, diminished opportunities for relationships to form and flourish, and had the potential to damage the well-being of all students involved in a negative event. In recent years, school districts across the country have recognized a need for improvement in the education system. Educators are spearheading efforts to combat the widespread epidemic of illiteracy and increase the level of college and career readiness. As a result, time, funding, professional development opportunities, and research have been dedicated to support this endeavor. While a number of resources are allotted for instructional purposes, the emotional element of student success is often overlooked, only widening the gap between success and stagnation. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine pre-K through fifth grade teacher perceptions of integrated restorative practices in their respective classrooms and how these practices affected disciplinary measures and intervention.

As restorative justice gained popularity in schools as a potential strategy for helping to reverse the deleterious effects of zero-tolerance policies, numerous misunderstandings and misapplications have emerged. This study focused on the experiences of school-based restorative justice practitioners and sought to foreground their voices and perspectives to highlight what is necessary for restorative justice work in schools to be effective. Critical narratives were used to elucidate participants’ perspectives and to allow their voices to serve as the focal point for the study. Findings were as follows: (a) the depth and ongoing nature of preparation practitioners undertake to sustain restorative justice work must be emphasized; (b) rather than a program or set of steps, restorative justice must be experienced as a set of principles or a philosophy grounded in genuine care and concern for individual people; (c) a cultural, political, and social shift is required for restorative justice to be implemented with integrity; and (d) restorative justice is a project of humanization and re-establishing democratic ideals. As such, educators in the field are encouraged to embrace the depth and complexity of the philosophical underpinnings of restorative justice and to acknowledge the personal, internal work that must be undertaken to serve a transformative function in school communities.

La justice restaurative est une alternative aux méthodes conventionnelles de voir l’infraction et d’y répondre. Elle est devenue presque partout dans le monde, un sujet essentiel dans la réforme de la justice pénale et a gagné du terrain dans le monde universitaire et dans les pratiques judiciaires. Ainsi, son essor et expansion au niveau international sont remarquables aujourd’hui. Grâce à sa flexibilité conceptuelle, son adaptabilité pratique et ses atouts réels, ce mode de justice mérite d’être pleinement développé au sein des systèmes pénaux français et sud-coréen. La première partie, consacrée aux fondamentaux de la justice restaurative, en témoigne sans pour autant occulter ses limites et risques. Pourtant, comme le démontre la deuxième partie, consacrée aux pratiques en France et en Corée du Sud, l’implantation et le développement de la justice restaurative dans ces deux pays sont freinés par plusieurs obstacles socioculturels et par plusieurs difficultés pratiques. La présente thèse a pour objectif de trouver des moyens de sortir de l’état actuel des deux pays en matière de justice restaurative, marqué par l’imperfection, la réticence et la réserve, de manière que les mesures restauratives existantes puissent retrouver leur essence restaurative et que la justice restaurative puisse s’implanter et se développer avec succès en France et en Corée du Sud. / The restorative justice is an alternative to the conventional methods to see the crime and to respond it. It has become, almost everywhere in the world, a key issue in the reform of criminal justice and has gained ground in academia and in the judicial practices. Its international growth and expansion are noteworthy today. With its conceptual flexibility, its practical adaptability and its real assets, this mode of justice deserves to be fully developed within the French and South Korean penal systems. The first part of this thesis, devoted to the fundamentals of the restorative justice, demonstrates this without obscuring its limitations and risks. However, as shown in the second part, dedicated to the practices in France and South Korea, the integration and the development of the restorative justice in both countries are constrained by several socio-cultural obstacles and a number of practical difficulties. This thesis aims to move away from the current state of the two countries in the field of restorative justice, marked by imperfection, reticence and reserve, so that the existing restorative measures can regain their restorative essence and that the restorative justice can be applied and developed successfully in France and South Korea.

This thesis examines the use of restorative justice with cases of sexual assault in Canada through the perspective of practitioner experience. It concludes that restorative justice for sexual assault is an innovative and viable justice practice that should be offered to survivor-victims as an option for their justice-seeking process. A literature review was undertaken to create a summary of past and current academic perspectives on the topic and to provide context for the interviews. Interviews were conducted with 12 restorative justice practitioners in Canada who have experience facilitating or participating in restorative justice processes that dealt with sexual assault. The data from the interviews was analyzed using thematic coding to produce a set of themes based on practitioner experience. The data was also used to examine the ethical issues that are relevant in the current landscape. This thesis determines that practitioners are knowledgeable about the practices that can make the restorative justice process safer. It finds that practitioners report being able to meet the varying needs of survivor-victims through procedural flexibility. It observes that they struggle with the practical and ethical tensions that arise in their work, but these tensions are manageable, and they are committed to working with them. Restorative justice has the potential to address a sexual assault case successfully when survivor-victim needs are met, safer practices are used, and practitioners are informed about the complexities and varying experiences of sexual assault. / Graduate

This dissertation provides a feminist restorative model of environmental justice that addresses the injustices found within UNICOR’s e-waste recycling operations. A feminist restorative environmental justice challenges the presupposition that grassroots efforts, law and policy, medical and scientific research, and theoretical pursuits (alone or in conjunction) are sufficient to address the emotional and relational harm of environmental injustices. To eliminate environmental harms, this model uses collaborative dialogue for interested parties to prevent environmental harm. To encourage participation, a feminist restorative model accepts many forms of knowledge and truth as ‘legitimate’ and offers an opportunity for women to share how their personal experiences of love, violence, and caring differ from men and other women and connect to larger social practices. This method of environmental justice offers opportunities for repair, reparation and reintegration that can transform perspectives on criminality, dangerous practices and structures in the PIC, and all persons who share in a restorative encounter.

The primary aim of this thesis is to reach a better empirical and theoretical understanding of what ‘community involvement’ means and what work it does in restorative justice. A case study approach was adopted to examine the involvement of the community in one selected practice of restorative justice, namely youth offender panels in England and Wales. Data collection comprised 127 interviews with key stakeholders involved in youth offender panels, as well as observation of 39 panel meetings, and analysis of related documents (e.g. panel reports and contracts). The role of ‘community’ in youth offender panels is argued to be more ‘theatrical’ (or rhetorical) than real: community panel members do not have a real say in the type or extent of reparation the offender should undergo, they do not clearly benefit from this reparation, and they do not support the reintegration of offenders into the community. The experience of youth offender panels suggests that the greater involvement of lay members of the community – or their changing role from mere witnesses/juries to facilitators – does not help to fully incorporate community harm into criminal justice practice. The English and Welsh experience also suggests that restorative justice advocates have placed unreasonably high expectations on the benefits of lay involvement. For example, this study found that lay members of the community do not have better ‘local knowledge’ than professionals. All in all, a key lesson from the experience of youth offender panels is that – while ignoring the kind of community that features in contemporary, urban contexts – restorative justice programmes run the risk of paying lip service to genuine community involvement. In conclusion, it is argued that restorative justice programmes need to start from a more concrete and up-to-date notion of community. While operationalizing community involvement, they need to acknowledge, all at once: the importance of place; the importance of family links, friendship and other social ties; and the importance of similar social traits and identities.

Justice and reconciliation are both highly complex concepts that are often described as incompatible alternatives in the aftermath of violent conflicts, despite the fact that both are fundamental to peacebuilding in societies divided by the legacies of political violence, oppression and exclusion. This thesis examines the relationship between justice and reconciliation, pursued as essential ingredients of peacebuilding. After advancing an inclusive working conceptual framework in which seemingly competing conceptions regarding justice and reconciliation are reconceived to work compatibly for building peace, the thesis presents the results of an in-depth case study of Rwanda's post-genocide justice and reconciliation endeavour. The thesis focuses on Rwanda's justice and reconciliation efforts and their relationship to the ongoing challenge of reformulating Rwandans' social identities. A field research conducted for this study revealed that issues of victimhood, justice and reconciliation were highly contested among individuals and groups with varied experiences of the country's violent history. Resolving these conflicting narratives so that each Rwandan's narrative/identity is dissociated from the negation of the other's victimhood emerged as a paramount challenge in Rwanda's quest for justice and reconciliation. Rwanda's approach to justice and reconciliation can be seen as an innovative both/and approach that seeks to overcome dichotomous thinking by addressing various justice and reconciliation concerns in compatible ways. However, by limiting its efforts to the issues that arose from crimes committed under the former regimes, the justice and reconciliation endeavour of the Rwandan government fails to reconcile people's conflicting narratives of victimhood, which will be essential to transform the existing racialised and politicised ethnic identities of Rwandan people.

The purpose of this report is to focus on the school-to-prison pipeline and the need to intervene with school discipline that pushes students out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. It showcases services and programs in Austin, Texas, including Southwest Keys, Webb Youth Court, and Council on At-Risk Youth as examples for solutions. The report also incorporates research and expert advice on the safety and wellbeing of students while advocating a need to change the policies and culture surrounding schools. / text

The aim of this study was to critically examined the juvenile justice system with regard to the theory of restorative justice as a better alternative to the punitive system that recognizes the rights of children as human rights is in line with the convention on the rights of the child. This research looked at punishment as a penal option, which the court imposes on a person for committing a crime. By means of a case study with regards to the One Stop Youth Justice Centre in Port Elizabeth, this study argued that the restorative method of dealing with youth offenders is a better alternative in contrast to the punitive system.

<p>History is regrettably replete with wars and dictatorial regimes that claimed the lives of millions of people. Most of the time the planners were not held accountable for their misdeeds. Fortunately in recent years the idea of people being prosecuted for mass atrocities was launched and debated. The purpose of this study was to propose avenues for promoting respect for victims rights. It examined the rationale of the victims reparation, its evolution, its denial and its rebirth. It canvass victims rights in domestic law especially in the civil law in comparison with international law. It proposed means whereby the international community may better address the issue of victims rights.</p>