About Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice in School Citizenship in Action Restorative Justice in a school context
Active applications of Restorative tools
A draft model for establishing a Whole School Approach based on Restorative Justice
Restorative/Relational Justice in Schools
R.J. in Schools - some practitioners from Nottingham and the Thames Valley
Restorative Justice in Schools - getting the essentials right
Restorative Justice in Schools the new & old paradim

In recent years there have been developments in the arena of Criminal Justice prompting those dealing with youth crime in particular to review their approach. Different strands are coming together from different parts of the world, as described by Martin Wright in his book 'Restoring Respect for Justice'. (Wright 1999) He highlights early victim/offender mediation that grew from an initiative in Ontario, Canada and has now spread from there, via the United States to Europe. He also makes reference to 'conferencing' - a meeting of the extended families of both victims and offenders, developed from the interaction of Western and Indigenous peoples in New Zealand and Canada. A third strand involves a theoretical study by John Braithwaite (Braithwaite 1989) who was considering the impact of a 'reintegrative shaming process' in which offenders have their behaviour disapproved of by those close to them but who can nevertheless be supported in reparation and re-integration back into the community. Different 'Restorative Justice Approaches' are being developed around the world in response to local situations but as Wright says:

'A family of theories is evolving. Different aspects and methods are emphasised, but there is a common underlying philosophy; the Restorative Justice Consortium (1999) has drawn up a definition and standards, and guidelines for good practice have been drawn up in Britain and Germany (Mediation UK, 1998; Serviceburo, 1998).'

My inspiration for work in schools has come from a number of sources. One of the first theorists in the field of Restorative Justice, Howard Zehr, the Director of the first Victim/Offender Reconciliation Programme in the United States, drew up a paradigm in which he compared traditional retributive justice philosophy with restorative justice values and ideas (1990). When I first discovered this I could see immediate parallels with approaches to behaviour management in schools and I re-wrote the paradigm with a schools focus.

I was also inspired, and continue to be so, by the vision of Marion Liebmann, first director of Mediation UK, who wrote a chapter in the first victim/offender mediation training manual to be produced in this country (Quill and Wynne 1993). In this chapter she sketches her vision for the future:
'Like an artist with a palette of colours, I will not restrict myself to what is already available, or what is financially feasible. Rather I will use my imagination to paint a picture of how things could be, given the resources and commitment to achieve what is really needed. (…) What could a system of restorative justice look like? The main feature would be an emphasis on undoing harm done, of whatever kind, and on looking to future behaviour.'
She then describes a new approach to parenting, to education of both old and young and to provision in the community, which emphasised conflict resolution and the restoration of relationship in the event of conflict or inappropriate behaviour.

My third point of departure was the Practice Standards mentioned by Wright, developed by the Restorative Justice Consortium. Reading these carefully I have again seen potential parallels between traditional criminal justice approaches and attitudes to dealing with inappropriate behaviour by adults in their capacity as either parents or teachers. The revolutionary potential of these Practice Standards if applied to authoritarian parenting and school discipline procedures is breathtaking- and yet I became convinced that if these standards were to be meaningful in the criminal justice field then attitudes would need to change in the community first. Thinking in the long term this would mean educating young people in dealing with challenging behaviour and building meaningful relationships.

My enthusiasm for Restorative Justice in the school context has developed partly because I saw links between Restorative approaches and the conflict management skills with which I was already familiar and which I believed to be important in the school context. However I was also concerned by anecdotes I had been hearing about how thoughtless remarks from members of a school community, old and young, could unravel the good that a conference could achieve. I had already come to the conclusion in my school work that neither Mediation nor Circle Time could thrive as 'bolt-on's. The underlying principles and the skills needed to be embraced by the whole school community. I began to suspect that the same was true for Conferencing.
All three processes would appear to be applications of a philosophy that needs to inform day to day interactions in a school community. I began to coin the phrase 'Whole School Restorative Approach' (Hopkins 1999a; Hopkins 1999b) This approach puts the maintenance of relationship at the heart of all interactions between people in a school community, especially in the event of conflict.

Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, shame and reintegration. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hopkins, B. (1999). "Restorative Approaches in the Community." Mediation 15(3): 3-4.

Hopkins, B. (1999). "Restorative Justice in Schools." unpublished.

Quill, D. and J. Wynne (1993). Victim and Offender Mediation Handbook. London, Save the Children/West Yorkshire Probation Service.

Wright, M. (1999). Restoring Respect for Justice. Winchester, Waterside Press.

Citizenship in Action - Restorative Justice in Schools

Restorative Justice is an innovative approach to offending behaviour, which places relationships and healing the damage done to relationships at the heart of a crime reduction policy. It is an approach that has the support of the Home Office, and Youth Offending Teams are being encouraged to consider restorative approaches when dealing with young offenders. Research is suggesting that young people who have met face to face with the people who have been affected by their criminal behaviour, together with trained mediators, have tended to re-offend less. Victims of criminal behaviour have also attested to the value of the process and many have been able to move on and put the trauma behind them.

This short article will describe our involvement in initiatives designed to take the values and principles of Restorative Justice into schools.

The experience in Great Britain
In some instances the starting point for the school focus had been a concern that certain schools were becoming involved in victim-offender mediation and conferencing (mediation involving a wider group of people affected by the offending behaviour) without appreciating the need for an environment conducive to restoration, rehabilitation and re-integration. The process of mediation and conferencing creates opportunities for active listening, recognition of the others' situation, empowerment and, often, apology and forgiveness. For real healing to take place, however, there is an implicit suggestion that the wider community has a role to play in supporting both victims and offenders to move on after the mediation. There has been anecdotal evidence to suggest that sometimes the safe and healing atmosphere of a conference or mediation has been undermined by unthinking responses from students and teachers. An important consideration then, is what skills the community might need to be able to support this process of reparation.

Another line of enquiry was inspired by a key idea in Restorative thinking - the importance of repairing harm. Restorative Justice stresses the importance of relationships over and above rules. It seeks at all times to restore relationships between people in a community when these have been damaged by inappropriate behaviour. The question arose as to whether it is always possible to assume that damage has been done to relationship. What if there was no relationship in the first place?

It became clear that a truly Restorative Approach, putting relationship at the centre of the community, needed to be working at both a preventative and a reparative level. Things started to slot into place! For several years Belinda had been working in schools developing Peer Mediation projects, working with young people and a few key staff. However she had come to the conclusion that such projects can only flourish if the whole school takes ownership of the philosophy of mediation and builds the practice and principles into their everyday interactions at every level.

A major influence on this work has been Kingston Friends Workshop Group, which had devised a wonderful analogy for considering conflict and conflict management. They suggest that the behaviours we see or hear in a group in conflict (perhaps a classroom or staff room on a bad day!) are merely the tip of this iceberg. Beneath the surface we can be fairly certain that what needs addressing are issues of low self-esteem, poor communication skills and lack of co-operation. A comfortable, harmonious classroom or staff room, on the other hand, would be full of people with high self-esteem, who communicated easily and effectively and who enjoyed working together. Not an Iceberg but a Tropical Island! Belinda had therefore began encouraging schools to develop Circle Time as a starting point from which to develop an environment conducive to problem solving and mediation, using the ' Iceberg to Tropical Island' model as a basis for planning the programme. Her starting point had increasingly been the adults in the school community, who need to be modelling the ethos and skills of creative conflict management and restorative practices. Without regular staff Circle Time student Circle Time is difficult to sustain. Staff training has revealed many staffroom icebergs and a willingness to work towards that tropical island.

From this basis the staff themselves can develop the model which will work best for their own school. Restorative Justice is about dialogue, about involving everyone in the process of finding ways forward, about mutual respect. Circle Time provides the forum and indeed the structure, for developing other kinds of circles - problem-solving circles, mediation circles, conference circles, school councils and so on.

None of this is new. Richard Cohen in his book 'Students resolving Conflict' advocates establishing a positive ethos first and foremost, then developing one-to-one problem solving skills and only then considering interventions like mediation. Belinda's contribution has been to link all this together with the ideas and practice of Restorative Justice and call it a Whole School Restorative Approach.

Of course there is also the radical aspect of Restorative philosophy which asks us to look afresh at rule breaking and punishment. In his stimulating and challenging book 'Restoring Respect for Justice' Martin Wright writes:

'Restorative Justice in the area of criminal justice is based on the idea that the response to crime should be to put right the harm, as far as possible and not, as hitherto, to inflict harm on the offender'.

In the school context this might mean responding to inappropriate behaviour by considering who has been affected and ensuring that any response takes into account the relationship between those involved. Those people familiar with mediation will recognise the importance of dealing not only with the behaviours that have caused conflicts but also addressing the underlying difficult emotions. Failure to do this leaves resentment and the conflict is likely to erupt again, maybe in a different form. This principle can apply in schools even when the conflict is between adult and student or adult and adult. Furthermore, as Martin Wright says:

'The example set by those who punish is an anti-social one, it tells people that you can use superior force to stop other people doing what you don't want them to do.'

A Restorative Approach then, endorses practices like negotiating groundrules with all those affected by the rules- a common practice in schools using Circle Time. It encourages mediation as a way of dealing with conflicts. It promotes dialogue and negotiation, mutual respect and empowerment. It provides a template for developing a truly democratic school, encouraging active Citizenship skills in staff and students alike. It suggests processes by which harm can be repaired, not soft options to punishment, but processes which make people far more accountable for their actions than punishment. Punishment without the opportunity to hear from the people affected by an inappropriate action can breed alienation and hostility. The 'wrongdoer' may feel unheard, the people affected remain resentful or possibly complacent and the tensions on all sided remain, to bubble up at a later date. A face to face meeting, mediated by a neutral facilitator, might be tough, but experience suggests that there is more chance of all sides feeling greatly relieved by the chance to air their feelings, to explore ways forward and sometimes to offer or accept apologies.

These are radical ideas. They are inspiring ideas. They touch people's hearts as well as their minds. Schools are excited by them. They want to engage in the experiment of seeing what will happen if enough time and support is given over to making them work. Belinda is about to embark on some projects in the Thames Valley, for example, which could take at least two years to be self-sustaining.

The Northern Ireland experience
"Understanding of conflict and non-violent ways of responding to it' is an objective of Education Mutual Understanding (EMU, a cross curricular theme in the curriculum in Northern Ireland. Peer Mediation was first introduced into primary schools in 1993 as an EMU initiative of the then Quaker Peace Education Project, an action research project at the Centre for the Study of Conflict.

During the next five years peer mediation programmes were undertaken in a number of primary and secondary schools in different parts of Northern Ireland. State school, Catholic schools, and Integrated schools were all represented in these programmes. The outcomes of these programmes illustrated a paradox. On the one hand, children were well able to internalise, adapt and apply peer mediation skills both in terms of providing formal mediations, and using them informally at home, and with friends. But on the other, hand, Jerry Tyrrell's research team found that very few schools were able to sustain the programmes, because the environment was not necessarily sufficiently child-centred. Matching Belinda's experience, they found that schools needed to reflect the same values throughout its community

This was brought home to Jerry, when after a demonstration of peer mediation by a group of pupils, at a school which had been training children for some time, a teacher said, "That's all very well, but what about blame and punishment." The values of peer mediation, which included empathy, inclusion, volunteering, being future focussed, and above all involving the parties in the conflict in the solution, are not necessarily those of the educational system.

In this sense the Northern Irish experience is similar to the rest of the UK, and as previously argued, schools have to create environments which are conducive to these values, if programmes such as conferencing or mediation are to flourish and grow.

The politics and reality of Northern Ireland have a way of creating baggage around even the freshest ideas. Justice is a contentious issue, and restorative justice has been dragged into the policing debate, because the restorative justice programmes in Republican/Nationalist areas tend to be community based, whilst those in the Loyalist/Unionist areas are police based.

So restorative justice has quite a high if confused profile, and perhaps a public misconception of what it is and what it can achieve. Nevertheless the children and the adults alike make the link between the skills children use to address conflicts in the playground and those needed in the Northern Ireland peace process. Empathy underpins peer mediation and politicians have gone on record acknowledging that empathy is a key skill in negotiation.

Conclusion
Those of us engaged in promoting programmes in schools based on restorative principles could point to anecdotal evidence that they have transformed the teaching and learning environments in individual schools. The reality is that for schools to take on such programmes in a sustainable way changes are needed in the environment of the whole school. Teaching is an undervalued, under appreciated, stressed profession, where the arbitrary measure of academic achievement is considered more important than life skills. The challenge for us is to harness the creativity, passion, vision and vocation that drew teachers into the profession and encourage them to reflect on their own practice.

We are feeling our way. We are all taking risks. We are learning together. Watch this space!

Belinda Hopkins, Director, Transforming Conflict; Centre for Restorative Justice in Education
Belinda@transformingconflict.org

Jerry Tyrrell, Director, EMU Promoting Schools Project
emu@ulst.ac.uk

References
Cohen, Richard (1995) Students resolving Conflict
Glenview: GoodYear Books

Wright, Martin (1999) Restoring Respect for Justice
Winchester: Waterside Press

Kingston Friends Workshop Group (1996) Ways and Means Today

Tyrrell, Jerry (2001) Peer Mediation - a process for primary schools (ed. Marian Liebmann) London, Souvenir Press.

Restorative Justice in a school context

Restorative Justice stresses the importance of relationships over and above rules. It seeks at all times to restore the relationships between people when these have been damaged by inappropriate or offending behaviour. This has profound implications for any community that seeks to embrace restorative principles - and none more so than the school community where young people are learning to be effective and reflective citizens.

The most well-documented applications of Restorative Justice in schools to date are the processes which seek to repair undisputed harm - Restorative Conferencing, Family Group Conferencing and Victim/Offender Mediation. These are being used not only in cases of offending behaviour but also with young people who are at risk of exclusion (or who have been excluded) as a way of addressing the relationship issues and residual tensions.

In schools where Restorative Practices are being used practitioners are discovering that other issues can be dealt with restoratively, and these may involve conflict where there is no 'guilty party' or when both sides are blaming the other. Mediation is often an appropriate response to such situations, where neutral facilitators enable those in conflict to listen to each other and find a mutually acceptable way forward.

An increasingly widespread application of Mediation in schools is the development of a Peer Mediation Service, usually run by young people themselves who have been trained to mediate amongst their peers and deal with conflicts that arise in the playground. Successful schemes are running in Junior and Secondary schools around the UK and secondary aged students have their own Young Mediators Network and run their own conferences.

Such schemes, however, are less successful if mediation is not an approach also used by the adults in the school community. This is the message of a Restorative Approach generally. It is important that Restorative Justice is seen not simply as a response to extreme behaviour but that the principles are in place in staffrooms, classrooms and playgrounds every day.

It would not make sense to deal with some situations using one set of values and then deal with other situations using different values. Young people are quick to spot hypocrisy and inconsistency. Justice is a very important issue for them and they appreciate it if the rules by which they are expected to live and work in the school community also apply to adults.
Indeed a key restorative principle would be that the whole community develop the rules together and are involved in finding ways forward when these rules are broken - whoever breaks them.

The processes mentioned above require certain skills of the facilitators but are also more effective if participants are also practised in certain key Restorative Skills which include:
Active listening
Non-violent communication
Anger management
Conflict transformation skills
Dealing with difficult situations
Restorative de-briefing and reflective practice

Restorative Justice is predicated on the notion that damage has been done to relationships by inappropriate behaviour and that prior to an incident there were relationships that have subsequently been damaged. This may not have been the case. In a school community relationships and community need to be actively developed and not taken for granted. This requires a set of Relational skills and can be nurtured with certain relational processes.

The skills include:
Active Listening
Self-awareness
Emotional literacy
Building rapport
Patience
Objectivity
Developing and maintaining self esteem
Appreciating difference
Inclusive practices
Expressing feelings and needs

The Relational processes and systems, which also develop the Active Citizenship skills of the whole community, include:
Circle Time for Staff (for staff development, team building and mutual support)
Circle Time for Students (for developing self-esteem, communication skills and a spirit of co-operation)
Healing Circles
School Council
Peer-counselling
Peer mentoring
Buddying Schemes
No-Blame Approach to Bullying
A Self-Esteem Policy for Staff and for students
A Whole School Relationship Management Policy (as opposed to a 'Behaviour
Management' Policy that tends to focus on young people's behaviour)

Pieced together, the Restorative and Relational processes and skills described above make up the jigsaw of a Whole School Restorative Approach. Every school will have its own priorities and will want to build on existing good practice. Time and resources for training and support will also be issues. For further information some useful links to other websites are listed below:

Transforming Conflict - A Centre for Restorative Justice in Education .This organisation is developing its own website which will have information about Restorative Issues in schools, details of courses , a bibliography of useful books and a discussion forum. It will be fully online by June 2001.
www.transformingconflict.org

Mediation UK. This is the umbrella organisation for community and victim/offender mediation services around the UK. It also supports mediators working in schools on Peer mediation projects.
www.mediationuk.org.uk

Active applications of Restorative tools -
putting relationships at the heart of the process

Circle Time for students
as part of the morning tutor time
as part of PHSE / Citizenship programme
to be integrated into curriculum time

Circle Time for staff (teaching and non-teaching)
for staff development
for sharing difficulties in a spirit of open learning
for supporting year teams, curriculum teams, lunchtime staff, etc.
Workplace mediation for discipline issues amongst staff
Mediation between parents and staff
Peer mediation for student conflict
School councils for developing active citizenship skills
Conferencing
as a Circle Time approach to class conflict
as a tool for dealing with inappropriate behaviour
for case conferences
for special-needs assessments involving parents, school staff and LEAs
These are some examples. Individual schools will design their own action plan.

Belinda Hopkins, January 2000

Restorative/Relational Justice in Schools

P R O C E S S E S

RESTORING (Repairing harm done to relationships and community)	RELATING (Developing/nurturing relationships and creating community)
A) undisputed harm: Restorative Conferencing Family Group Conferencing Victim/Offender Mediation Sentencing Circles B) disputed harm, conflict, mutual recrimination: Mediation Peer Mediation Healing Circles No-Blame Approach to Bullying	including: Circle Time for Staff (for planning, review, support and team building) Circle Time for Students School Council· Circle of Friends Peer Counselling and Mentoring Whole School Development of Relationship Management Policy (cf Behaviour Management, which tends to be student-focused)

RELATIONSHIPS

S K I L L S

skills include: Non-Violent Communication Active Non-Judgemental Listening Conflict Transformation Developing Empathy and Rapport Having Difficult Conversations Restorative Debriefing After Critical Incidents Understanding and Managing Anger MUCH

skills include: Emotional Literacy Developing and Maintaining Self-Esteem Valuing Others Explicitly Assertiveness Acknowledging and Appreciating Diversity Constructively Challenging Oppression and Prejudice Connecting Across Differences OVERLAP

Restorative Justice in Schools - some practitioners from Nottingham and the Thames Valley share their experiences

This article is inspired by a visit that I made recently to Nottingham at the behest of the Restorative Justice in Schools project organisers. Four of us met, Robin Tinker, Lynne Pickup, Debbie Hewer and myself, in the comfortable setting of Lynne's house on a glorious sunny day and we gave ourselves the luxury of a fairly free agenda, discussing issues as they came up. We were all there to learn from each other's experiences but my particular brief was to offer insights on how the Nottingham project could develop further and involve more of the whole school population.