Roundtable Discussion: “Restorative Justice: A Movement

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From the course by Vanderbilt University

Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration

19 ratings

Vanderbilt University

Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration

19 ratings

There are three orienting facts that render mass incarceration in the United States an ethical problem worthy of our deep consideration. First, the rate of incarceration has grown dramatically over the last 40 years so that today there are 2.2 million people in prison or jail, and another 5 million on probation or parole. This means that 1/32 adults in the USA are under state supervision. Second, the application of incarceration is disproportionately applied to the poor, people of color, and other vulnerable populations. Research shows that 85-90% of those in the criminal justice system fall below the poverty line, and the experience of incarceration only impoverishes people further. The consequences of having a criminal record are harsh and debilitating, ranging from family disruption, social alienation, and disenfranchisement. In these ways and others, the current situation of crime and punishment represents a dramatic moral challenge. Finally, victims of crime are themselves poorly served by the current system, often ignored or sidelined in the machinery of punishment. This course seeks to discover alternatives to the current systems of crime and punishment in order to imagine a more inclusive, just and moral society.

From the lesson

Justice and Mercy: Alternatives to Mass Incareration

The course has examined mass incarceration as a significant social and ethical problem. In this final module, we turn our attention to alternatives to the present system of punishment. Following Dean Townes' invitation, we seek to "respond to the dehumanizing effects of imprisonment." We explore community policing, criminal justice reform, and alternative models, including restorative justice, in a bid to locate possibilities for hope.

Chief August Washington: “Community Policing”11:10

Roundtable Discussion: “Restorative Justice: A Movement7:54

Roundtable Discussion: “Restorative Justice: Principles and Practices”22:02

Roundtable Discussion: “Restorative Justice as an Alternative to Mass Incarceration”21:42

Roundtable Discussion: “Broadening the Impact of Restorative Justice”3:58

Dean Emilie Townes: "Turning knowledge into action: Next Steps"8:51

Meet the Instructors

Graham Reside
Assistant Professor
Vanderbilt University Divinity School

[MUSIC]

Thank you all for being here.

We want to have a conversation about restorative justice and

I know you all work in this area.

So I thought I might start just by asking you how you came to this work.

Rashida.

>> Well, I was a school teacher for Metro National Public Schools

and without really knowing what restorative justice was,

we did a lot of restorative practices in the classroom.

I started out as a Freedom School intern, through Children's Defense Fund, and

that's everything we did.

We didn't discipline the children in any negative way.

We were high school students, so what were we really going to do?

So we had to find creative ways to engage with the students,

engage with the parents, to fix things when things went wrong in relationships,

when the kids misbehaved or whatever.

And so, I think, it was just a natural progression.

I took that into the classroom.

And that was really my first experience with restorative justice.

>> What are you doing now?

>> Now, I run an organization called Gideon's Army, Grassroots Army for

Children, and we are working on a city-wide adoption of

restorative justice of changing Nashville, Tennessee,

all of our systems to function on the philosophy of restorative justice.

But also in Metro Public Schools,

I do a lot of restorative justice creating their models within the school.

>> So Joanie, can you tell us how you came to this work?

>> Yes, so I, like a lot of other people, were spurred to action

by the non-indictment of Darren Wilson in his killing of Mike Brown.

So it was just a few years ago.

And I had been taking courses over the years in prisons.

We had required readings like The New Jim Crow and things like that.

And another really important book to me was, Our Prison's Obsolete.

When I read that, I was like, the only way of thinking is abolitionist thinking.

Like, we are living in an era basically where slavery is still existing.

So before that I had been thinking of reform, like that was my mindset.

But now I realize that's never going to be enough, and just going along with

abolitionist thought, you have to think of what's the alternative going to be.

Like, what are we going to put in place to keep these new systems of oppression

from rising again, and that's how restorative justice stood out to me.

>> Great, thanks, and so, where are you practicing?

>> I work with Gideon's Army with these great humans around this table.

And I'm a member of the planning team and different things like that.

All of our meetings involve just restorative justice strategies,

like doing circles, setting agreements,

passing around the talking piece, like waiting your turn to share.

Listening, like actively, with respect, with love.

Yeah.

>> Maybe we should have used the talking piece for this-

>> [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK]

>> Maybe possibly.

>> I could hear and think then.

How about you, Molly?

How did you come to the horn?

>> So I am a student here at, well,

not I'm a student at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt.

And I've been doing prison work for a couple of years.

And last year,

I had a Chaplain see internship at the Tennessee Prison for Women.

And I ran a group there where we did sort of group processing, talk therapy.

And what I realized in hindsight,

is that I was using a lot of restorative practices in an informal way, and

just didn't have the vocabulary to sort of name them as such.

So like Joanie was talking about, we sat in a circle and we passed the talking

piece and we explored a lot of notions of harm and

healing which are sort of key concepts in a restorative justice frameworks.

So at the end of last year, I was lucky enough to go to do a training at

the Summer Peace Building Institute around restorative practices and

sort of foundations of restorative justice.

And learned, kind of in a more formal sense,

how to talk about restorative justice and what the tools looked like and

I think I came to it sort of through the back door.

So had been kind of using some practices and not realizing that I was using them,

and then got to learn more about the work, and

sort of started to understand it as this in a way of being in the world.

So now I continue to do prison work and work with Gideon's Army and

just really try to sort of infuse it into everything that I do and

everyday when I walk around in the world.

>> Great, thanks.

>> Sure. >> Erika?

>> Very similar to Rashida and Molly, my introduction to restorative justice

was sort of a natural sort of output of my work and engagement here in the city.

So in 2006 or 7,

I do believe, Nashville was identified as a youth violence hotspot.

So the Federal Department of Justice identified Nashville as a target

city to help reduce the number of youth deaths and youth violence across the city.

At the time I was employed with an organization called the Oasis Center which

provides lots of variety of services for young people in the city,

it is one of our power players when it comes to youth interventions here.

And I was put in charge of what we considered the community,

the youth voice, portion of this sort of federal grant.

Practitioners such as Rachida, other individuals in the city,

we were able to bring in to really start to think about how we reframe this

issue and challenge with our students with students at the table.

They were the ones who were driving the decision making.

They were the ones who were coming up with alternatives for themselves.

And so, similar to what's been shared earlier,

a lot of the tools that we were using eventually started

to the language around or sort of justice was one to became more common.

What we saw is Molly shared, it really was more so

an extension of how we choose to exist one another.

And I think from my perspective what's really important is that

young people themselves saw this as a tool and

an alternative for what was currently occurring within the city of Nashville.

From there went on to volunteer with Gideon's Army, we piloted a program in

a middle school here which was probably the first time I used the term actual

restorative justice in a setting with young people who were engaged in maybe

some risky behavior and potentially have the potential to be pushed out of school

because of different policies and procedures within the school system.

>> Thank you.

[MUSIC]

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