The inventory just didn’t add up.

So, he called the Harrisonburg Police Department. An investigation led to one of his employees — his younger brother. The 18-year-old was stealing phones and submitting them to a machine in the mall that pays cash for electronic devices.

Murphy, who had a run-in with the law when he was 18, found himself in a tough situation. Murphy had to decide whether to press charges against his little brother, knowing what that might mean for the future.

“I’m branded with a felony for the rest of my life,” said Murphy, a football player who also ran track, and spent a year in jail after robbing a man during his senior year at Harrisonburg High School. “If I let that happen to my brother, he would have been a felon. I didn’t want him to go through what I did.”

A different approach

So Murphy turned to restorative justice — a in March 2015 as an alternative to the traditional criminal justice system. Instead of merely looking at punishing an offender, restorative justice focuses on the needs of the victims, offenders and the community at large to resolve a crime.

With the guidance of a mediator, offender and victim discuss the effects of the harm done by the crime and come up with resolution. , associate professor of development and justice studies for the at ��ݮ����, said some restorative practices can be traced back to ancient practices but contemporary practices started to pop up in the 1970s.

The professor points to a 1974 case in Elmira, Ontario, where a probation officer came across two young adults who vandalized 22 homes. The officer was fed up with the system. Typically, the offenders would have been issued a fine, moved on and likely reoffended. With the help of a Mennonite prison worker, a different kind of punishment was proposed.

The probation officer “had a very simple idea,” Stauffer said. “Take these guys and knock on each door of these 22 houses and make them face the persons they harmed, and explain … that they’re sorry and that they were willing to make restitution. “It was so successful that it took hold and began to grow exponentially.”

In the late 1970s, — known as the grandfather of restorative justice in the United States — began experimenting with restorative justice in Indiana. In 1996, Zehr began teaching at EMU.

Combined with the Mennonite belief system that centers on peace and nonviolence, restorative justice resonated with many in the Harrisonburg area. Stauffer would later work beside Zehr teaching restorative justice practices. He said a shift toward restorative justice should lower recidivism rates — the percentage of people who reoffend after leaving jail — and reduce the cost of prosecuting offenders and jailing inmates.

“There’s a good portion of the system that isn’t working anymore,” said Stauffer. “It’s in fact not yielding the intended outcomes that we want from it. … The pillars of our current system say this is … to deter people from doing crime, so we show how punitive we can be.”

Catching on

in Harrisonburg launched its restorative justice program in 1999. Sue Praill, who graduated from EMU in 2010 with a master’s in conflict transformation, was frustrated with the lack of cases that were being referred to the center. Praill, Fairfield’s director of restorative justice, approached administrators about implementing a program about two years ago.

, who know oversees HPD’s program, was receptive.

“I heard about restorative justice, but didn’t know a lot about it,” Boshart said. He was one of the first to , an experience he says opened his eyes to an entire new way of thinking.

“It gives the victim a voice,” said Boshart, adding that the approach will be used on selective cases only. “Restorative justice isn’t the answer to every case, but it’s a tool. If the victim doesn’t want to do it, we don’t go there.”

HPD set up a steering committee and review team to establish guidelines and review cases to be handled through restorative justice. To go through the process, the responding officer to a crime refers the case for the committee to review. Cases can range widely from shoplifting and larceny or assaults.

For the case to be considered, it has to might three pieces of criteria: The victim has to agree to participate, the offender must agree and the offender has to admit to the crime. Boshart stressed offenders who are recommended for the program are not getting a free pass. Many have to be pay restitution, perform community service and, in some cases, face up to other problems that are going on their lives.

“A lot of them say it would have been easier to go to court and pay the fine,” Boshart said.

Praill is excited to see cases being resolved through restorative justice. “It was like the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle,” she said. “When people come face-to-face and have a conversation, amazing things can happen. Sometimes all victims want to hear is ‘I’m sorry.'”

With restorative justice, she said, the hope is people don’t reoffend. “We’re hoping, over time, we can break that cycle,” Praill said.

Leading the way

Restorative justice is already being used in Harrisonburg City Schools and at James Madison University. , director of the Office of Student Accountability and Restorative Practices at JMU, implemented the approach about five years ago after taking Zehr’s course at EMU. “I was blown away by what it is and what it does,” Bacon said. “So I started taking more courses.”

Not everyone thought it would work at JMU. “I remember most people I told in the beginning said no way are college students going to be able to talk to each other like that,” he said. “They text each other. They don’t even like being in the same room as each other. But we set up the rules, we set up the guidelines and it has blown me away about how they treat each other.”

This year, Bacon used restorative justice practices in cases against students who were caught stealing bricks from the Quad, an annual tradition that’s led to about 1,000 having been stolen this year.

Regardless of the type of case, Bacon said, restorative justice teaches life lessons.

“They will learn how to deal with conflict for the rest of their lives in a different way,” he said. “They can sit down and talk to people withrespect.”

‘There’s always a what if’

Bacon acted as mediator for Murphy and his brother’s case. During the meeting, the younger brother expressed a lot of pain, Bacon said. His mother died and his stepfather left when he graduated high school. He was struggling to survive financially and emotionally.

“All these deeper issues came out that wouldn’t have during the criminal justice system,” Bacon said. “If you hear his story, it’s just heartbreaking.”

Murphy hopes restorative justice practices continue to expand in law enforcement. “So many young kids don’t have options,” he said. “It’s straight to jail.”

He was pleased to give his brother an option.

“Restorative justice gave him a second chance,” Murphy said. “I could have been ruthless and said, ‘You’re going to learn your lesson.'”

As are result of the alternative approach, the younger brother had to repay or work off the debt, meet with a mentor and develop a life plan, which included attending Blue Ridge Community College.

Murphy struggled as young adult after his felony conviction. He found it hard to find jobs so he started his own business from the ground up. He recently closed the kiosk in the Valley Mall and opened a Boost Mobile store in Waynesboro last month.

Although he’s found a measure of success, he questions what his life would be like if restorative justice had been an option for him. “I’m happy where I am, but there’s always a what-if,” Murphy said.

Published with permission from the Daily News-Record, March 4, 2016.

“Our goal for this learning tour was to expose the delegation to many different applications of restorative justice in the local area beyond the criminal justice system,” said professor , who hosted the delegation as co-director of the . “Many in the delegation later said they were truly impressed with the potential for restorative justice to impact the whole of society.”

The delegation’s visit was sponsored by with support from the United States Agency of International Development. The foundation is engaged in a long-term project to introduce and integrate restorative justice practices into the Nepali criminal justice system through training of judges, prosecutors, lawyers and law enforcement officials, said program officer Ramkanta Tiwari, who escorted the group.

The foundation also wants to establish the academy as a resource center for restorative justice in Nepal and in the larger South Asia region, Tiwari added.

Well-placed to effect change

Officials from the academy included Keshari Raj Pandit, NJA’s executive director; Bimal Poudel, registrar; and Rajan Kumar, program manager, as well as The Honorable Rajendra Kharel, judge of District Court of Lalitpur and The Honorable Devendra Gopal Shrestha, justice of the Supreme Court of Nepal.

On the first full day at EMU, the group attended a seminar with Stauffer, and were joined for a discussion by , who is co-director with Stauffer of the Zehr Institute of Restorative Justice. Zehr, who had visited Nepal years ago to speak about restorative justice, remarked that at that time, there was “little knowledge and only marginal interest.”

He found the delegation’s interest to be “inspiring,” he said. “They are strategically placed to encourage the implementation of restorative justice not only in Nepal but in the entire region … It is exciting to see this level of interest and commitment now.”

Truth and reconciliation discussed

Stauffer was one of the reasons the delegation visited EMU; he had visited Nepal in 2014 with San Francisco-based expert to present and participate at an Asian Foundation-hosted roundtable with judicial representatives from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh: this reciprocal visit was his chance to share in the hospitality and learning.

One aspect of Stauffer’s past professional experience – his 16 years working with transitional justice in Africa, including the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission – was of particular interest to the delegation.

After a decade of conflict between pro-democracy and Maoist supporters, Nepal has begun a peace process that included a transitional justice bill to bring accountability for historic harms. The government also established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Commission on Inquiry into Disappearances, which seeks to utilize restorative justice practices on behalf of victims and affected community members.

During an introductory circle process with Stauffer, several of the men related how learning about restorative justice had enriched and enlivened their professional engagement. Their goals, they related to Stauffer, were to learn more about how the principles could relate to their specific interests, such as juvenile justice, but also to the criminal justice system as a whole.

“There is not much room for dialogue in our system,” said Poudel. “We would like to know more about how to include that.”

‘RJ’ has broad applications

On the final day, the delegation met with various collaborators of Harrisonburg’s community restorative justice initiative at their various worksites. These practitioners included , of the Harrisonburg Police Department; Sue Praill, director of restorative justice at the ; and Josh Bacon, associate dean of students/student accountability and restorative practices at James Madison University.

A last tour stop was the , where program director Richi Yowell talked about how the therapeutic transitional home for formerly incarcerated men assists in easing the re-integration process back into society.

The delegation was especially interested to learn more about how government agencies collaborate with non-state entities, Tiwari said. Also of interest was the public perception of the restorative justice process, how referrals were made, and what role the facilitators took in the process, he added.

Interest was shown from both parties in the possibility of hosting Nepali judicial officials at EMU for further training in restorative justice practices.

Tiwari expressed appreciation at the hospitality shown to the group and called the “unmatched opportunity” to meet with experts such as Stauffer and Zehr a “professional and personal milestone.”

“There can be no better place than EMU, especially the , when it comes to [learning about] restorative justice,” he said.

After visits to Richmond, Baltimore and Washington D.C., the group spent several days in San Francisco before returning home.

Editor’s Note: The International Justice Resource Center provides an of the Nepali constitutional process.  To learn more about transition justice processes in Nepal and countries around the world, visit . Read more about the peace dialogues in this article about Sujan Rai, who came to EMU’s 2015 to build her skills and network with other international peacebuilders.

The conference is hosted by the (PJSA), dedicated to bringing together academics, K-12 teachers, and grassroots activists to explore alternatives to violence and share visions and strategies for peacebuilding, social justice and social change.

“PJSA is an important bi-national alliance for peacebuilding research, scholarship, training and activism,” says , executive director of ���ѱ�’s . “It is a great honor that so many CJP and EMU faculty, staff and graduates will be featured in prominent conference roles this year, and allows a rare opportunity to highlight our distinctive contributions to the peacebuilding field.”

Those “distinctive contributions” include both conceptual and practical dimensions to the fields of , , , peace and justice studies pedagogy and the pedagogy of practice within the field, experiential education, reflective pedagogy and the arts and peacebuilding.

Catherine Barnes offers keynote address

Dr. Catherine Barnes, affiliate professor at CJP, will share from more than 30 years of experience working with deliberative dialogue processes in places as varied as the UN General Assembly Hall to village gathering places. Her address is titled “Engaging together: exploring deliberative dialogue as a path towards systemic transformation.”

“Deliberative dialogue” is a process that can empower participants to foster collaborative relationships and perceive the underlying mental models that maintain the status quo with the goal of fostering new approaches to complex challenges.

For the past seven years, Barnes has been working in support of transitional processes in Burma/Myanmar. She has worked and lived in more than 30 countries as a teacher, trainer, researcher, policy advocate and consultant with the focus of helping civil society activists, diplomats and politicians, and armed groups to build their capacities for preventing violence and using conflict as an opportunity for addressing the underlying causes giving rise to grievance. Barnes has worked with numerous peacebuilding and human rights organizations, including Conciliation Resources and Minority Rights Group International.

Focusing on education

���ѱ�’s on peace and justice guides its educators, many of whom are sharing their pedagogical practices and discussing ways to educate future peacebuilders in the “educator’s strand,” designed for personal and professional development of K-12 teachers, undergraduate and community educators. Themes include pedagogy, curriculum development, building a culture of peace in your classroom or school, alternative education programs, and restorative practices.

On the undergraduate level, professor , who leads the in the department of applied social sciences, leads a roundtable discussion for faculty and administrators of peace and justice studies programs.

, the with CJP’s , joins professor and graduate students in a session on mentoring student peacebuilders and the importance of those mentors being experienced practitioners themselves.

Restorative practices are highlighted by professors and in a “relational justice” workshop on how mindful teachers can prepare and prime “their best selves” in preparation for inviting students into models of restorative justice. Mullet also joins , professor of education at Bridgewater College, for a workshop on relational literacy in multicultural K-12 classrooms.

Cheree Hammond, professor of counseling, leads educators in a workshop on contemplative pedagogies and the cultivation of a just and peaceful self.

Restorative justice, trauma healing, playback theater featured

The conference offers an opportunity to highlight ���ѱ�’s unique peacebuilding initiatives. The brings together practitioners from EMU and JMU, as well as local law enforcement. Collaborators in the initiative will speak: , co-director of the; education professor ; Harrisonburg Police Department lieutenant Kurt Boshart; , restorative justice coordinator at the ; and , director of JMU’s Office of Student Accountability and Restorative Practices.

Another definitive CJP program, (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience), will be introduced in a workshop by professor and program director .

troupe co-founders and lead a workshop on playback theater as qualitative research. Vogel is a professor of theater; Foster instructs in the applied social sciences department and with CJP. The applied theater method invites dialogue and healing through community-building, as audience members share stories and watch as they are “played back” on the stage. Among other settings, Inside Out has performed on campus with college students returning from cross-culturals, among international peacebuilders and in workshops for and research about trauma and sexual abuse survivors.

, professor of applied social sciences, speaks about social capital networks as forms of resistance among battered undocumented Latinas, sharing just one strand of a .

, assistant professor of restorative justice and peacebuilding, leads a discussion on the film “Vision is Our Power,” a film about black youth ending violence in all its forms. The documentary was created by four young filmmakers participating in a multi-year arts and leadership Vision to Peace Project led by Turner; the film debuted in 2008 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

And more…

, professor of English, presents on life narratives and identity issues in the Balkans with his wife Daria, a CJP graduate who teaches in the counseling department at JMU. The two lived and taught in the Balkans.

, professor of philosophy and theology, explores the recent work in philosophy and science on theory of emotion.

, a new faculty member coming to EMU next semester after concluding his PhD research at American University, participates several panels, with a diversity of topics including transnational solidarity and police brutality and racism in the contested areas of Palestine and Ferguson, Missouri. Seidel is a board member of PJSA.

Among the alumni presenting: Vesna Hart, Sue Praill and Tom Brenneman join a panel discussion on justice and the nature of human nature. Ted Swartz presents the satire with Tim Ruebke and JMU professor of theater Ingrid DeSanctis.

View the . Registration fees will be covered for attendees from the Shenandoah Valley who are affiliated with or sponsored by Bridgewater College, James Madison University, ��ݮ����, or Mary Baldwin College. For more information, click .

“We sought to bring together a cross-section of restorative justice practitioners, theorists and innovators,” said , co-director of the Zehr Institute and the project’s leader. “Some of the invitees were world-recognized in the restorative justice field, but others were invited to ensure that diverse and often-unheard voices would be represented.”

One-third of the 36 participants were from populations that are under threat socially and economically in their regions of the world. The genders were equally represented. One person was under age 21, though two other young adults had been expected to attend.

Conversing about RJ’s ‘revolutionary intent’

The idea behind the unusual mixture of invitees was to foster provocative conversation about the possibilities for restorative justice (RJ), particularly for addressing structural injustices, said Stauffer.

In the prospectus for the three-year project submitted to the funder, , the organizers wrote: “On the social margins, there is growing research and experimentation with RJ as a tool for addressing structural harms and injustices. This project will explore and document these emerging practices in order to recapture the revolutionary intent of RJ.”

The organizers called attention in their prospectus to what they viewed as the danger of RJ settling into a “social service practice” centering on “repair at the micro-interpersonal level.” Instead, they wished to highlight the ways that RJ can “provide a coherent framework for transforming macro-social structures that cause harm.”

Aware that many of the 36 attendees at the first consultation would not have prior relationships with each other, the organizers devoted about half of the five days to exercises and facilitated conversations designed to establish trust and a common basis for exploring future possibilities. Senior graduate students at ���ѱ�’s served as facilitators for the process.

Tough questions

First, the attendees prepared a history line of RJ, then they explored identity, power and privilege in the field. On the third day, they embarked on a discussion of best practices.

“We accepted the challenge of bringing together a highly diverse group, especially given that many of the participants are international leaders in the field, [being] accomplished researchers, authors, practitioners and facilitators in their own right,” Stauffer said.

“The challenge was heightened because the group grew beyond the original envisioned size of 20 to 25,” he added. “We needed to go well beyond 25 to have a true cross-section of voices, but it was difficult to develop coherence among three dozen people with strong opinions, especially in only five days.”

Yet the participants were largely positive in their final evaluations, he said, indicating that they had not regretted investing a workweek in wrestling with each other over tough questions, such as the extent to which RJ should be viewed as a social movement, as opposed to simply a set of restorative practices.

Stauffer did not pretend to be neutral on this last point. In his opening remarks to the group, he referred to the U.S. penal reform movement having been “co-opted.” In contrast, he said he hopes RJ continues to grow into a social movement in North America, with the aim of “transforming deep structural conflicts and injustices.” Toward this end, North Americans have much to learn from their international brothers and sisters about “large-scale applications” of RJ, he said.

Agreement on RJ’s core values

For a social movement to be successful, Stauffer told the group, it requires political opportunity, resource mobilization, a framing message, and critical mass (or a “tipping point”).

On the last day, in a final small-group presentation, a participant observed that the 36 attendees had largely agreed during the week on RJ’s core values, but not necessarily on how to practice restorative justice.

This first consultation will be followed next year by a public conference attended by up to 120 people. Next time, Stauffer said, his organizing team will work to create a conference format that moves participants more quickly into discussions on the future of the field, with a view of moving into a research and writing phase in the final year of the project.

Participants in the consultation

The 36 participants were:

1. Aaron Lyons, Fraser Region Community, Justice Initiatives, Canada
2. Ali Gohar, Just Peace Initiatives, Pakistan
3. Barb Toews, University of Washington Tacoma / Designing Justice+Designing Spaces, USA
4. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
5. Brenda E. Morrison, Centre for Restorative Justice, Simon Fraser University, USA
6. Carl Stauffer, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
7. Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Center for Restorative Justice, Suffolk University, USA
8. Catherine Bargen, Restorative Justice Coordinator Crime Prevention and Victim Services Division, Government of British Columbia, Canada
9. Dan Van Ness, Center for Justice and Reconciliation, Prison Fellowship International, USA

10. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU and Atlanta (Ga.) consultant, USA
11. Fania Davis, executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
12. Cameron Simmons, youth worker with Restorative Justice for Oakland (Calif.) Youth, USA
13. Gerry Johnstone, University of Hull, UK
14. , Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
15. Jeanette Martinez, Circle of Justice LLC, New Mexico, USA
16. Jennifer Graville , Community Conferencing Program, KBF Center for Conflict Resolution (Md.), USA
17. Jodie-Ann (Jodie) Geddes, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
18. Josh Bacon, James Madison University (Va.), USA
19. , ��ݮ����
20. Katia Ornelas, Independent Consultant, Mexico
21. , (STAR), EMU
22. Kay Pranis, Circle Trainer, USA
23. Kim Workman, Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria, University of Wellington, New Zealand
24. Linda Kligman, Vice President for Advancement, International Institute for Restorative Practices, USA
25. Lorenn Walker, Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice, USA
26. Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, Mennonite Central Committee, USA
27. Mark Umbreit, Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking, University of Minnesota, School of Social Work, USA
28. Matthew Hartman, Clackamas County Juvenile Department, Restorative Justice Coalition of Oregon, NW Justice Forum, USA
29. Mulanda Jimmy Juma, Africa Peacebuilding Institute, St. Augustine College of South Africa
30. Najla El Mangoush, Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, EMU
31. Robert Yazzie, Chief Justice Emeritus of the Navajo Nation, USA
32. Seth Lennon Weiner, Porticus, New York, USA
33. sujatha baliga, Impact Justice, USA
34. Susan Sharpe, Advisor on Restorative Justice, Center for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame, USA
35. Theo Gavrielides, The IARS International Institute and the Restorative Justice for All Institute, UK
36. , Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), EMU

The facilitators were led by project manager , and included CJP graduate students Janine Aberg, South Africa; Michael McAndrew, USA; Jordan Michelson, USA; Mikhala Lantz-Simmons, USA; and Ahmed Tarik, Iraq.

“I can’t imagine a better first case,” said , the facilitator who led the meeting between the two men. “This person could have been charged with a felony.”

Instead , the offender and his employer were able to speak frankly about their needs, agree on a restitution plan and reconcile the matter in a mutually beneficial way outside of the criminal justice system.

The new program, the first of its kind in Virginia and more than two years in the creation, was announced at a press conference today [March 19, 2015] in Harrisonburg. Emphasizing the collaborative partnership, HPD Chief Stephen Monticelli stood alongside members of the steering committee, including representatives of local law practices and the Commonwealth’s attorney, the , and restorative justice practitioners from ��ݮ���� (EMU) and James Madison University (JMU).

Among those endorsing the program and expressing support were Marsha Garst, Rockingham County Commonwealth’s attorney, EMU president Loren Swartendruber and JMU president Jonathan Alger.

Garst, who spoke of her reputation for being “hard” on crime, said that restorative justice should not be misinterpreted as being “soft on crime.” The victim-offender meeting is a difficult and emotionally challenging task for both parties, she added, but the process offers the offender the possibility of moving back into a positive role in our community.

“We kind of get to the point where we believe that the criminal justice system is the only thing that’s going to work,” said HPD Lt. Kurt Boshart, a 26-year veteran of the force who led the initiative from within his department. “It’s exciting to see where this program could go. I can foresee it catching on pretty quickly.”

Backed by veteran officer

The idea began several years ago, when Sue Praill with the Fairfield Center first proposed it to the HPD. Praill directs restorative justice services at the Harrisonburg nonprofit, which has been offering them in the community for nearly 20 years.

Eventually, a broader advisory group began meeting with Boshart to plan the program in more detail. In addition to Praill, the group included Fairfield Center Executive Director Tim Ruebke and Bacon – an associate dean of students at James Madison University who has overseen wide implementation of restorative justice practices on that campus. Also participating have been , co-director of the at ���ѱ�’s (from which Praill and Ruebke hold master’s degrees, and where Bacon has also taken graduate-level coursework) as well as defense attorneys, a representative from local prosecutor’s office and other community representatives

“It’s been exciting to have partners from the police department who are so committed to [the program],” said Praill.

More effective, affordable possibility

While change can be a slow process within the protocol-bound world of law enforcement, Boshart said reaction to the new program within the HPD has been generally positive. So far, five officers have taken a restorative justice training. By this summer, he hopes that most or all of the department’s 94 sworn officers will be trained to identify specific crimes or conflicts that might be best handled through a restorative approach that focuses on victims’ needs and holds offenders accountable to meeting them.

One of the larger challenges facing the new program is communicating the fact that restorative justice emphasizes offender accountability, and isn’t simply a get-off-easy approach to criminal justice. Boshart said that as people learn more about restorative justice concepts, they understand how it can offer police more effective and affordable ways of dealing with some crimes than the traditional criminal justice system.

“For us to turn our head from that is a disservice to our community,” he said.

While the program remains a work in progress, its broad parameters have been established by the advisory group. After police officers refer cases, a committee from the advisory group will screen them to ensure they’re appropriate for the program. Depending on a case’s specifics, facilitation would be handled either by the Fairfield Center or staff from Bacon’s office at James Madison University.

One of the main benefits of restorative justice is the way in which it humanizes both victim and offender, giving each a better understanding of how and why one hurt the other. Praill points out that under the new HPD program, officers who refer cases for restorative justice will participate in the group conference and benefit from this humanizing process as well.

“Nobody calls the police and says, ‘Hey, we’re having a great time,’” said Boshart.

Improved relationships for all

Instead, officers generally show up when things have gone wrong and often interact with people during their not-finest moments. By being a part of the restorative justice conference, he hopes officers will be able to see these same people in better light. At the same time, people whose interactions with law enforcement are often negative will have new opportunity to develop better relationships with police officers.

For now, these conferences will be led on a volunteer basis by trained facilitators like Bacon, Praill or others from EMU. If the caseload grows beyond volunteers’ capacities, the program may need to find new sources of funding. At this point, however, all involved are concentrating on laying the foundation for a successful, sustainable program.

“Part of the idea is to go slowly enough that the program is organic to this area, and so that there’s confidence in the community that this is a good program,” said Ruebke.

As that happens, and as the caseload grows, figuring out funding “can be a good problem to have later,” added Boshart.

Off to good start

Later will come later; for now, the new program is off to a remarkable start. During the conference for the first case, the offender told the employer he’d stolen from about the desperate circumstances in his life that had encouraged him to steal.

The employer, in turn, talked about how he’d once found himself in a very similar situation. After he committed a similar crime, though, there wasn’t this sort of alternative. He was convicted of a felony, served time in jail, and after getting his life back in order, didn’t want his employee going down the same path. They agreed on a plan for restitution. The employee was paired with a mentor. The employer volunteered to become a mentor for someone else in the community.

“This process allowed for the victim and the perpetrator to come together and tell their stories, said Bacon. “None of this it would have happened if it just went through the normal criminal process. I was just blown away … It’s why I love doing restorative justice.” In his opening remarks at the press conference, Bacon credited EMU’s – who is known internationally as the “grandfather of restorative justice” (and who will be honored at a ) – for mentoring Bacon when he took courses at EMU and began implementing restorative justice practices at JMU.

Mark thought it was an odd request, but he went upstairs and found Joe in his room. “Your roommates are questioning your sexuality, and asked me to talk with you,” Mark said. “If you want to talk, that’s fine, but I thought you should know what they’re saying.” Joe didn’t want to talk about it, and the two rejoined the party downstairs. (All along, this had simply been a cruel prank by Joe’s roommates, intended to put him and Mark into an awkward situation.)

By the time Mark got up to leave, Joe had gotten quite drunk. He followed Mark outside, and as Mark walked down the steps, Joe yelled “faggot” and punched him in the face. Mark picked himself up and hurried home.

A year went by, during which Mark avoided Joe and his friends. He lived in fear, and wondered if this is what the rest of his life as a gay man would be like. Just before graduation, Mark heard Josh Bacon, director of James Madison University’s Office of Judicial Affairs, speak in one of his classes about something called “restorative justice.” It sounded like something that might be useful in addressing what happened outside the party that night, and Mark approached Bacon after class to ask about it. (Mark was specifically interested in a restorative justice approach; he declined to pursue the matter through the legal system or JMU’s traditional judicial affairs process.)

Bacon thought the incident would be an ideal one to address through a restorative process and agreed to help set up a meeting. For his part, Joe had also been troubled by the punch he threw that night, and immediately guessed what was on Bacon’s mind when he called from judicial affairs. Joe agreed to meet and talk with Mark.

In experimental stage

Having taken graduate-level courses in restorative justice at EMU, Bacon was in the experimental stage of using restorative processes to address a student conflict at JMU. He pulled out all the stops. He rearranged his office furniture into a circle, and used a medal commemorating JMU’s centennial as a “talking piece” that was passed from person to person. 2

Mark and Joe sat in that circle for an hour and a half. Mark told Joe about the fear he’d lived with since that night. Joe apologized, and told Mark how his sexuality had been repeatedly questioned before Mark approached him at the party, and how, in the drunken, late-night logic of the moment, he’d decided to respond in the manliest way he could think of: with his fists. Things didn’t end with complete reconciliation and fast friendship between the two, but Mark and Joe reached a point of empathy for one another. It was a dynamic that Bacon had very rarely seen with discipline cases he had handled through the traditional judicial affairs process. Afterwards, both Mark and Joe independently contacted Bacon to thank him for what he’d done – a telling indicator of how powerful the process had been for both of them.

“I can count on one hand how many thank-you cards I’ve gotten in judicial affairs,” says Bacon, who is now associate dean of students. “This sold me on restorative justice.”

Today, looking back on this early use of restorative justice in his office, Bacon emphasizes how radically different things could have been had the incident been handled by the traditional student discipline book. Joe’s violent actions could have been prosecuted as a hate crime, involving multiple hearings during which the lawyers’ clocks would have been spinning at some frightful hourly rate. Even more importantly, Mark and Joe would not have had the opportunity to speak directly and honestly to one another, meaning neither would have had the “chance for healing, for apologies, for understanding,” says Bacon.

“Blown away” by Zehr’s class

During most of the 15 years he’s spent so far in judicial affairs at JMU, Bacon came across the term “restorative justice” from time to time. Like many in his field, he’d generally held a vague and incorrect notion that it mainly involved restitution after some sort of wrongdoing. At some point, he became aware that Howard Zehr, often called the “grandfather of restorative justice,” just so happened to work practically next door at ��ݮ����, and he decided to check out the whole restorative justice thing in a little more detail.

“When I took Howard’s class, I was blown away,” says Bacon, who began buying every book he could find on the subject of restorative justice and went on to complete a graduate certificate program at ���ѱ�’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. 3 “It just recharged me in how to deal with student behavior and student conduct.”

Bacon quickly realized that the traditional judicial affairs process, which focuses on holding offenders accountable, was “just totally missing” the needs of victims of crime and hurt. As rapidly as he could, he began introducing the practices and theory of restorative justice to his work with student conduct at JMU. Sometimes, this took the form of a full-blown, sit-in-a-circle-and-talk meeting like the one between Mark and Joe. More often, though, this simply entailed a new approach to things like alcohol violations, which account for the vast majority of cases that end up on the judicial affairs docket. Instead of simply doling out consequences to fit a certain violation, Bacon and his staff began asking students to think about how their behavior had hurt people around them, and what steps they could take to fix things.

“We don’t ask what students deserve. We ask what they need to learn so they don’t end up back here,” says Chris Ehrhart, MA ’11 (conflict resolution), the restorative practices coordinator in the judicial affairs department.

In addition to the meeting between Mark and Joe, Bacon and his staff began using talking circles and other restorative justice processes to handle a number of other very high-profile cases at JMU. After several successful cases, restorative justice “just sold itself” to other administrators at the university – some of whom, like Bacon, initially looked at restorative justice with misunderstanding or skepticism.

Restorative justice not “soft”

One misconception that Bacon had to address is that restorative justice is a “softer” approach that doesn’t hold offenders accountable for their actions. One strong argument to the contrary is that restorative justice techniques have been and are being used across the country and world to address all sorts of crimes and wrongdoing that are far more serious that anything handled by a university discipline office.

Then there’s the fact that it’s simply difficult for an offender to face someone whom they’ve hurt. Often, it’s easier to accept a suspension or do some community service than to look a victim in the eye and talk about what’s happened. Students who go through a restorative justice process don’t come out telling people they “got off easy,” Bacon says. “They come out changed.”

And so, in a time when “security” and “threat assessment” have become campus safety buzzwords, restorative justice’s very different ideas of victim-offender conferencing and community-building have become the foundation of JMU’s approach to student discipline.

Zehr, who remains in close touch with Bacon, says that’s largely due to Bacon’s whole-hearted embrace of restorative justice and his use of it in “some really high-profile cases.”

“He took risks”

“He demonstrated restorative justice. He didn’t just talk about it. He took risks,” says Zehr. “He’s so well-placed at JMU and with his background in organizational management … he began to envision getting the entire university to buy into it.”

Today, both JMU as an institution and Bacon have become national leaders in the restorative justice movement on college campuses. In 2010, Bacon was invited to be part of a symposium at EMU on the topic, along with David Karp, author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities. (Zehr is the general editor of the 16-volume Little Books series, including seven titles pertaining to restorative justice.)

Zehr says that more and more universities are beginning to recognize the powerful ways in which restorative justice can transform the process of student discipline, and are looking to follow the example of pioneering schools like JMU.

“Universities are supposed to be about education. Part of education is learning to live with each other,” said Zehr. “I think that’s what Josh and JMU are grasping.”

Growing use of circle processes

In the grand scheme of things, a very small percentage of the roughly 1,500 cases that come before judicial affairs at JMU go through a by-the-book restorative justice process. In the first year he began the new approach, Bacon handled fewer than 10 cases this way; last year, it was perhaps a few more than that. Sometimes there’s not a clear-cut victim. Sometimes either the victim or the offender may not agree to meet with the other party. And sometimes, the judicial affairs staff just doesn’t have the time and resources to handle more cases in this new way.But Bacon and his colleagues have realized that the ideas and processes of restorative justice have far wider application than simply dealing with the aftermath of some sort of bad behavior. A talking circle, for example, provides a great structure for all the members of a group to contribute to a discussion. And in this proactive sense, restorative justice has been finding even wider application yet at JMU.

In addition to applying restorative justice techniques to student discipline cases, part of Ehrhart’s job is encouraging the use of restorative practices as a community-building tool for various groups on campus. Ehrhart, a 2008 JMU grad who earned his master’s at EMU three years later, has begun teaching others to lead circle processes at JMU’s presidential leadership academy, a week-long summer event to develop the skills of student leaders on campus.

Eliana Jerez-Givre, president of the Madison HIV/AIDS Alliance, was among those student leaders who learned about circle processes from Ehrhart at the leadership academy. In the fall of 2013, she led the other members of her organization’s executive board through a circle process to develop better planning for what they’d like to accomplish.

“The technique helped a lot,” says Jerez-Givre, a junior. “Since then we have been productive and each individual has taken the initiative to do their part for the executive team.”

Senior Liz Ramirez is another student leader who learned about circle processes from Ehrhart. She is executive director of JMU SafeRides, an organization that provides free rides home to JMU students on weekends. The group’s executive board has 21 members, some of whom speak often and some of whom rarely wade into an unstructured conversation. Passing a talking piece around a circle, she says, encourages wider input, better listening and better decision-making.

“Everyone knows that they’re going to get their turn, and it’s easier for everyone to listen to each other,” Ramirez says.

Integrated into student orientation

The circle process has been embraced to such a degree at JMU that when 4,200 first-year students arrived on campus for orientation in August 2013, all of them received a crash-course in using talking circles to discuss challenging ethical questions.

As part of its orientation program, JMU created a film about the aftermath of a hurricane hitting New York City. It places the viewer in the position of a government decision-maker faced with a dilemma of where to concentrate and prioritize relief efforts. At their orientation, all incoming first-year students watched the film, and then broke into eight-person groups to discuss – using a circle process – how they would make decisions about hurricane response.

These discussion groups were led by 170 faculty, staff and older students who had previously been trained to lead circle dialogues.

“The incoming students just loved it. They felt safe. They felt comfortable. They loved that nobody could dominate the conversation,” says Bacon. “Circles created a safe space for students to deal with these deeper ethical issues.”

Afterwards, Bacon told Zehr, his restorative justice mentor, that the circle processes made for the best program ever held for incoming students. “Thank you so much for introducing me to this process,” he wrote to Zehr in an email. “It really is transformative and I am excited to see what JMU and what JMU students can now do with this.”

Art Dean, JMU’s special assistant to the president for diversity, was one of the facilitators who led the talking circles for incoming first-year students at their orientation.

“I was very excited about this process,” says Dean. “It was powerful for students to hear different experiences and different opinions from their peers.”

As the talking piece went around the circle, students discussed how their own life experiences affected the ways they would make decisions about the questions posed by the hurricane film.

“This process has forced us as a community to have conversations about things that we might not have had to otherwise,” Dean says. “It forced us to contemplate other perspectives in our decision-making.”

For nearly two decades, Zehr and others have pioneered restorative justice as an academic discipline at EMU. Now, across town at one of the biggest universities in Virginia, restorative justice is being put to widespread, groundbreaking use to resolve conflict and build a stronger community.

Dean points to the JMU mission statement: “Preparing students to be educated and enlightened citizens who lead productive and meaningful lives.” Exposing practically every member of JMU’s incoming class of 2018 to the circle process, Dean continues, gives each of them a new tool to do just that.

— Andrew Jenner ’04

1. These are not these students’ real names

2. The talking circle has been borrowed from certain First Nations traditions. Sitting in a circle, only the person holding the object (“talking piece”) may speak, while the others in the circle listen attentively. He or she then passes the object to an adjacent person, who may talk if desired or silently pass it to the next person, until the object comes around the circle again, giving everyone multiple opportunities to share their thoughts and feelings, if desired.

3. Josh Bacon, PhD, holds degrees from Clemson University in educational leadership, with a cognate in law, and from Salisbury University in education administration, with a concentration in counseling. Bacon enrolled in the graduate program at CJP “just because I like learning about this stuff – I don’t need another degree!”

Bacon says it is not a difficult “sell.” One person gets hooked on restorative justice and tells another person and soon a group evolves to attend a restorative justice short seminar, with some continuing to multiple-day trainings.

“The point is, RJ [restorative justice] works,” says Bacon. “And lots of other interventions used for years with students don’t.”

Here’s how Bacon himself came to RJ:

After more than a decade of ushering misbehaving students at JMU through hearings on their conduct, sanctions, and other legalistic steps, Josh Bacon was ready for a change in 2009.

“I went into educational leadership and student affairs because I cared about young adults and their futures,” he says. “But that’s not how they perceived me – they saw me as the ‘bad guy,’ somebody there to enforce the university’s rules, somebody who wasn’t on their side.”

So he took a course at EMU with restorative justice pioneer Howard Zehr. Before the semester was even over, he started applying Zehr’s teachings to his student judicial work.

“One of the biggest oversights in my [previous] work was not engaging the victim; my office was almost entirely offender focused,” recalls Bacon.

Bacon found that he saw astonishing results if he asked the victims of offenses, the perpetrators of them, and affected community members to sit in a facilitated circle and, one by one, share their thoughts on the harms done and the ways those harms could be “put right.”

“I’ve been amazed by how these circles work,” he says. “I’ve never felt so connected to people. It’s almost magical, spiritual, sitting in a circle, passing a talking piece, listening carefully to each other, going deeper. Every one of the students has risen to the occasion.”

Bacon has used restorative justice processes with 20 cases so far – “I keep waiting to see when one will go bad”– from a couple of guys in a fight, to 15 people occupying an entire dormitory floor who needed to sort some problems out.

Here’s an example of a relatively simple case handled by Bacon:

There were these two students who knew each other as freshmen. Fueled by alcohol, one guy assaulted the other.

A year later, the victim contacted me, only coming forward because he had heard about restorative justice. He didn’t want a judicial proceeding; he just wanted to stop ‘living with this thing as I have been for the last year.’

I conferred individually with both parties and made sure that they were both ready to sit with each other and respectfully talk about what had happened. That took maybe six hours total. They each were encouraged to bring one support person along.

The victim wanted to know why he was targeted for an assault – not knowing why, he had been living in fear of possibly another one. The attacker explained that he had been upset with other things in his life and that he would never attack again. He had once been assaulted himself and he knew what it was like.

The victim received a heartfelt apology. I have never seen or heard college students talk like this to each other about a serious issue. The dialogue got to a much deeper level. Both left the meeting feeling like a load had been lifted from their shoulders. The meeting itself only took an hour.

If I compare that to what is involved in a formal judicial hearing – often attorneys present at $1,000 an hour, family members, witnesses, police officers and so forth – it is obvious which approach works better with fewer resources used.

Bacon’s fresh approach to discipline has rippled out into many offices and departments dealing with JMU’s 19,500 students, including those concerned with substance abuse, off-campus life, residence life, clubs and organizations, fraternity and sorority life, the health center and even university planning.

Bacon and his collaborators at JMU have come up with a draft “vision statement” for a “university community that is dedicated to living restoratively.”

In a nutshell, the seven points in the draft describe a university where a student learns to live healthily and healingly in community from the day of freshman orientation through his or her time in residence, to handling conflicts in the classroom, on the playing field, and among friends and family members.

For example, Kristen Muncy, an official in the JMU office of student activities & involvement, now devotes a day of the annual week-long “Presidential Leadership Academy” – targeted at the leaders of student government, clubs, Greek societies, and athletic teams – to restorative justice training.

As a sign of JMU’s commitment to RJ, the university has just hired its first, full-time “coordinator of restorative practices,” based in Bacon’s office. The new person is Chris Ehrhart, a 2011 graduate of ���ѱ�’s master’s in conflict transformation, with a focus on restorative justice.

In March 2010, 20 JMU officials, including the senior vice president for student affairs and university planning, joined 50 administrators from 11 other universities at ���ѱ�’s first symposium on restorative justice in college settings. About half of this group stayed for three additional days to undergo intensive training led by Bacon, Shay Bright of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and David Karp of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

In March 2011, a three-day RJ training for campus conduct administrators was repeated at EMU, with 25 attendees from eight universities, including far-flung University of San Diego in California, Carleton College in Minnesota and University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Again, Bacon and Karp led the training, along with Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, co-director of the office on crime and justice for Mennonite Central Committee, and Dr. Carl Stauffer, EMU restorative justice professor.

Now Bacon plans to offer RJ training to campus conduct officers from around the region, meeting at the Baltimore campus of the University of Maryland in the fall of 2011.

“I believe higher education is just beginning to discover the potential of restorative justice practices in creating educated and enlightened citizens,” he says.

“I went into educational leadership and student affairs because I cared about young adults and their futures,” he says. “But that’s not how they perceived me – they saw me as the ‘bad guy,’ somebody there to enforce the university’s rules, somebody who wasn’t on their side.”

Symposium presenters Josh Bacon (left), JMU director of Office of Judicial Affairs, and Shay Bright (far right), assistant director of conflict resolution and student conduct services at Colorado State University, talk with keynote speaker Howard Zehr, EMU professor of restorative justice and bestselling author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice.

Seeking a fresh approach, Bacon signed up for a restorative justice course at EMU, taught by an internationally recognized pioneer in the restorative justice field, Howard Zehr.

Even before the semester-long course was over, Bacon was applying restorative justice principles and techniques to cases referred to JMU’s Office of Judicial Affairs, which he directs. In the last 18 months, Bacon has offered students the option of participating voluntarily in “restorative justice circles” about 20 times. Nobody has turned him down. The regular judicial procedures remain on the table as back-up options. All concerned – the errant student, the people harmed by the student’s actions, community members affected by the incident, such as campus police or residence hall members – have found it to be an overwhelmingly positive experience, says Bacon.

“I’ve been amazed by how these circles work,” he says. “I’ve never felt so connected to people. It’s almost magical, spiritual, sitting in a circle, passing a talking piece, listening carefully to each other, going deeper. Every one of the students has risen to the occasion.”

Learn more about the principles of restorative justice

Restorative justice catches on…

Bacon’s fresh, but effective, approach to discipline caught the attention of colleagues scattered across JMU’s 665-acre campus, especially those who spend much of their time addressing the conduct of more than 18,000 students in residence halls, the Greek system, health services, and athletic events.

As a result, 20 JMU officials, including the senior vice president for student affairs and university planning, joined 50 administrators from 11 other universities at a March 15 symposium offered by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at EMU. About half of this group returned to EMU for the next three full days to undergo intensive training – the most complete yet offered on campus-based restorative justice – led by Bacon, Shay Bright of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and David Karp of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

All three leaders offered multiple examples from their universities of handling destructively drunken students, vandalism, plagiarism, theft, assault, interpersonal conflict, and noise issues through circles and other restorative justice processes. Bacon’s preferred process, a restorative justice circle, is not complicated, though it does require a trained facilitator, preferably with a gift for handling sensitive interactions.

The importance of the circle process

To illustrate the circle process, let us start with a composite situation that would be readily recognizable to university officials: a 20-year-old sophomore living in a residence hall gets drunk at an off-campus party. He then joy-drives around the university’s baseball field, leaving deep tire marks. He tops off his evening by vomiting in the lobby of his dormitory. Called by campus police, the city police come and arrest the sophomore for vandalism and under-age drinking.

This “offender” is the son of a lawyer, who proceeds to look for holes in the evidence against his son, fearing his son’s suspension or expulsion, not to mention police record. The father advises his son to admit nothing about the incident. Members of the baseball team begin sending the son angry e-mails and posting blog attacks because they can’t practice on their home field or host home games while new sod is being put down on the damaged parts of their field. The son begins to be afraid of being attacked by baseball players, when he can’t even recall driving across their field. He tells his buddies, “Doesn’t everyone do stupid things when they get drunk?” And they agree, yet he does feel bad, embarrassed, about what he has done.

In the past, Bacon would have felt trapped in the legal issues of the case. Was a breath-test given and what were the results? Is this the sophomore’s first offense? What is the cost of repairing the baseball field? But answering these questions would make nobody feel any better or motivated to change – not the student, not the lawyer-father, not the student’s friends, the baseball players, the residential students who had to smell and step around the vomit until it was cleaned up, the housekeeping staff who cleaned up the vomit, the police who are tired of campus calls like this.

Today, this is what Bacon would do in such a case. He would contact each person affected by the incident – from the student himself to the person who cleaned up the vomit. He would even contact the coach and captain of the university baseball team. He would offer each person the opportunity to participate in a restorative justice process whereby everyone would sit together and consider what harms were done by this incident and what could be done to “put things right.” Bacon would explain that participants in the circle would need to agree to keep the conversation confidential and that matters raised in the circle could not be used in judicial proceedings. Instead the circle would consider who was harmed by this incident, along with possible remedies, usually involving obligations to be met by the offending student.

A new result to an old problem

Here’s how Bacon’s circle would work: each person would speak in turn (only the person holding the “talking piece” may speak – the others must listen), initially telling his or her story. As each person speaks in successive rounds of the circle, the speakers usually move from how they were affected by the offense to exploring ways that the harm can be healed or mitigated. Emotions are often raw, tears common. Nobody is required to speak. When a person is handed the “talking piece,” he or she may pass it along for this round, or even successive rounds.

In such a setting, the sophomore no longer has any reason to minimize his role. He can explain that he was undergoing an initiation into a club and was urged to keep drinking even after he felt he had enough. His designated driver abandoned him, so he tried to get home on his own. And he loves baseball ñ he comes to all the games. He never meant to do anything to hurt the team.

Once all the stories and harms are explored, Bacon would lead the circle to consider next steps. These may include another circle with members of the club that was initiating him, a loan from Dad to pay for re-sodding the baseball field which son will repay by working on the university’s grounds crew for the summer, volunteering to staff the baseball concession stand during home games so more funds could be retained by the team, and helping the residence-hall cleaners on weekends when they are short-handed.

Bacon and his staff would note these steps on an agreement signed by all community members present in the circle – with all pledging to help in restoring the fabric of the community torn by this incident. They would end with socializing around refreshments, which Bacon would have arranged for the sophomore to supply.

Astounding outcomes

Of the 20 circles he has facilitated so far, Bacon says none have failed to yield positive outcomes. At the rate things are going, Bacon dreams of changing the name of his workplace from the “Office of Judicial Affairs” to the “Make Things Right Office.”

Bacon’s mentor, professor Howard Zehr, author of the bestselling Little Book of Restorative Justice, introduced the four-day event at EMU by explaining that restorative justice practices can be traced back to tribal or indigenous practices of peacemaking, but have proven to be helpful even in modern-day cases of crimes with severely harmed victims.

Sociologist David Karp, who co-edited the first book exploring restorative justice for university students, Restorative Justice on the College Campus (2004), notes that the majority of campus offenses are linked to substance abuse, particularly drunkenness. Even sexual assaults are often alcohol-fueled. To reduce this problem, students need to develop “internal controls,” fostered by “moral education” rather than punishment. They need to be held accountable to the community in which they live, with a view of reintegrating them as contributing citizens.

“The removal of a student from the community [as occurs with suspension or expulsion] is likely to displace the problem to another, less fortified community without resolving it,” Karp wrote in the book, though he added that “removal may be necessary when a student poses a threat to campus safety.” A second book, Reframing Campus Conduct – Student Conduct Practice Through a Social Justice Lens (2009), has been produced by two editors active in the Association for Student Conduct Administration, which was known as the Association for Student Judicial Affairs until it changed its name last year.

During their many hours together – listening to speakers, watching short video clips, role playing, sharing their experiences – the participants at this seminar often referred to the gap between why they initially wanted to work with university students – because they believed in the educational and transformational role of the university experience – and their perception by students as being figures of authority and enforcement, to be maneuvered around.

Whether the administrators were from small Christian colleges (and half of them were) or from large, public institutions, all seemed to be on the same page: they wanted to stop relying on legalistic “hammers,” whereby offending students are treated as nails and those harmed get little or no attention, and start using tools that promise to heal the town-and-gown community, while further educating the students about their responsibilities as members of that community.

A positive process

“After 12 years of looking at problems through judicial lens, restorative justice has rejuvenated my career,” says Bacon. “I’m actually enjoying my work these days. I walk out on campus, feeling good, with my head held high, and so does everyone else involved in the process, including the students who have taken responsibility for the harms they caused and are now fixing them. It’s a great feeling.”

Other colleges and universities represented at some part of the four-day event were: Bridgewater College, Liberty University, Virginia Tech, George Mason University, Northern Virginia Community College, and ��ݮ����, all being in Virginia; Howard Community College in Maryland; Eastern University in Pennsylvania; Bluffton University in Ohio; Skidmore College in New York; Colorado State University; and King’s College University in Alberta, Canada.

Post-conference evaluations were 100% positive, with administrators expressing “hope” and “enthusiasm” for this new approach to student conduct problems.

Hard data on the success of restorative justice is currently limited to the criminal justice field; that data is positive. But David Karp at Skidmore has sent surveys to 30 higher education institutions – including the handful that routinely use restorative justice, such as the University of Colorado at Boulder, Michigan State University, and Clemson University – in an effort to determine how restorative justice interventions stack up against traditional disciplinary models in terms of recidivism and other measures of salutary outcomes.