They Will Build Relationships or Else: Restorative Justice in the Context of Neoliberal Schooling

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Birds of a Feather? Examining the Connections Between Restorative and Punitive Practices

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores the challenges and contradictions of implementing restorative justice (RJ) in schools governed by the punitive commonsense of racial neoliberalism (Goldberg, 2009; Wacquant, 2009). I examine how even transgressive and liberatory practices can be co-opted to serve neoliberal ends, while also offering a set of guiding questions to help educators, activists, and scholars avoid
the pitfalls of RJ in order to build more just and humane schools.

Theoretical Frameworks
This paper begins by bringing together literature on the school-prison nexus (Kaba & Meiners, 2014), racial neoliberalism (Goldberg, 2009), and the punitive commonsense (Wacquant, 2009) to illuminate the ways in which, in the context of neoliberal schooling, RJ can reproduce and reify inequity. Next, I employ critical RJ theories (Evans & Vaandering, 2016) to position RJ as a
paradigm and ontology at odds with neoliberal education.

Methods and Data
This study draws on data from a three-year long ethnography of Presente, a youth-led RJ group at a high-reform school that use indigenous circle practice and youth participatory action research (YPAR) to challenge injustice. Data include participant observation of weekly after school meetings, document analysis, interviews with 18 student RJ peer leaders, fieldnotes, and critical self-reflection notes.

Findings
My findings suggest that there are conflicting views regarding the values and aims of RJ. School administration and teachers largely viewed RJ as an alternative to suspension, positioning RJ as a kinder and gentler way to control students. RJ, as understood and practiced by Presente, aimed to challenge power dynamics, name and disrupt oppression, and to build youth power and center
student voice. Presente’s goal was to reposition school as a space that challenged – rather than reproduced – inequity. Its impact was limited, however, due to conflicting views of the aims of RJ. Specific limitations include: (a) viewing RJ as a tool for behavior management; (b) viewing RJ as a
(failed) panacea for problems caused by structural inequity; and (c) implementing what is meant to be a democratic practice in an undemocratic space. These limitations are deeply tied to the punitive commonsense of racial neoliberalism and illuminate the ways in which liberatory practices can be coopted.

Significance
While RJ can challenge punitive exclusionary discipline practices and help transform school culture, it is also challenged by the punitive commonsense that saturates schools. This study illuminates how and why this happens and offers insights into how schools implementing RJ might avoid this.

Author

• Dani O'Brien, Northland College