Constructions of Justice: Key Actors Speak Out on Critical Restorative Justice Implementation

• In Event: Toward a Critical Restorative Justice Praxis

Abstract

Objectives
The current study examines how staff and students at one school (“Justice High”) think about their use of restorative practices in the context of dismantling larger systems of oppression, supporting youth voice, and balancing traditional power in schools. Prior research demonstrates that restorative practices do not necessarily equate with closing the racial school discipline gap, because the punitive mentality of traditional discipline still manifests (Author, 2016). By examining this school’s explicitly critical approach to restorative implementation, I aim to push scholarship toward distinguishing between discipline reform that transforms versus that which perpetuates the status quo.

Theoretical Frameworks
Knight and Wadhwa (2014) propose a model of critical restorative justice. Restorative justice, they contend, can play a central role not just in a school environment that is already healthy, but in one that is trying to shift its culture and promote social change. In line with this philosophy, Wadhwa (2016) advocates that restorative circles establish a co-constructed understanding of problems and solutions, rather than the top-down nature of traditional disciplinary processes. This study seeks to determine how and to what extent this co-construction was a reality at Justice High.

Methods and Data
All participants were staff or student leaders at one urban charter high school in the Southern United States that serves majority Latinx students and students below the poverty line. I conducted interviews with teachers and administrators and focus groups with the youth leaders who facilitate restorative circles after training in restorative theory as well as anti-oppression work. Data were audio-recorded and transcribed. After several read-throughs, I created a deductive codebook and used analytic memos to capture major themes.

Findings
Staff and students described restorative practices as a means of building relationships and trust, which in turn helped resist traditional power dynamics in school, and made school a safe place to process broader political and social issues. However, this seamless integration of critical restorative theory and practice broke down in certain disciplinary instances. Staff and youth expressed frustration with ambiguities: unresolved tensions between the undergirding philosophy of restorative accountability, and the punitive discipline policies and structures that undergird the school system.

Significance
This paper proposes several ways to modify the critical restorative justice framework, as well as implications for research and practice. Critical examinations of restorative practices are necessary in order for scholarship to understand how these practices can transform school culture. For practitioners, problem co-construction differs from traditional teacher professionalism, and I highlight practices Justice High uses—like circling with staff—to help support a restorative culture. Finally, administrators must be honest, with themselves and their stakeholders, about how much leeway they have to determine disciplinary policies; a restorative practice might feel like a waste of time to a student who knows he or she will still receive a punitive consequence like a demerit or detention.

Author

• Hilary Lustick, University of Massachusetts - Lowell