Restorative Justice and Health: Theoretical and Methodological Praxes to Disrupt Carceral Logics

• In Event: Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations of Restorative Justice

Abstract

A new discourse in public health is bringing to light how exposure to the ordinariness of structural discrimination in institutions—whether in education, criminal legal processes or carceral settings—leads to deleterious outcomes in health. Recognizing the significance of individual and community health to disrupting carceral logics, the initiation of a health justice grounded lexicon has opened the doorway to new and dynamic scholarly (and advocacy) engagement. This paper joins with emerging scholarship to advance an interdisciplinary framework at the nexus of restorative justice, public health, education, and criminal law. In doing so, it examines theory, methodologies, and practices to locate restorative justice in the framework of structural health interventions. In doing so, it invites multidisciplinary thinking and action to reduce exposure to systems, practices, and norms imbued with carcerality and punishment which reify structural discrimination. The paper’s central aims are to elevate the connection between law and policy as a health harming social determinant; expand restorative justice measures that promote safety, accountability, relationality, community healing, and wellbeing in public systems; and, consequently, substantively impact the sites in which health inequities emerge and persist.

Authors

• Thalia González, UC Law SF

• Mara Schiff, Florida Atlantic University