Restorative Justice News Archive

The Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice and Institute for State and Local Governance at the City University of New York have announced a $16.5M investment in restorative justice programs throughout the city, with $6.5M going to community-based programs including our Midtown Community Justice Center. Restorative justice responds to harm by facilitating dialogue between the people involved, fostering understanding and healing instead of punishment. Our Midtown Community Justice Center will use the investment to expand its new Youth PACT (Positively Advancing in Community Together) program, which offers teenagers arrested for weapons possession a supportive pathway out of the legal system.

With support from Richmond County District Attorney Michael E. McMahon and NYC Council Member Kamillah Hanks, the Center announced several new youth programs coming to its Staten Island Justice Center. Ranging from restorative justice to placekeeping to entrepreneurship programming, these initiatives will create lasting safety by investing in young people’s passions and neighborhoods. “In addition to directly engaging more community members, this project will pave the way for enhanced collaboration with other community organizations,” said Sonila Kada, the director of Staten Island Justice Center.

When our default response is to meet harm with punishment and isolation, it’s hard to imagine a different path forged with dialogue and understanding. But by taking that step, we can get closer to genuine accountability and repair.

“We want to make real that people are more than the crash.” The New York Times profiles our Circles for Safe Streets program, which brings drivers face-to-face with the people they have harmed to do something all too rare in the criminal legal system: talk to each other. In this piece, hear from Hillary Packer—associate director of restorative practices at the Center—as well as people who have taken part in Circles for Safe Streets from both sides of a car crash.

WNYC Radio Rookies reporter Deborah Ugo-Omenukwa worked with the Center to explore restorative justice in youth courts. She spoke with our Brownsville Community Justice Center to learn more about restorative approaches to the legal system, and the difference between punishment and consequences.

Those who have lost loved ones in traffic accidents often feel the legal system fails to hold drivers accountable. Highlighting our driver accountability programs that use the principles of restorative justice, KPBS radio in San Diego quotes our Amanda Berman, "Having to confront [the impact of your actions] and reckon with that is much more powerful and much more likely to change behavior."

Josiah Bates of TIME Magazine gives a window into the day-in-the-life of a violence interrupter while spending time with the Center for Court Innovation's Save Our Streets (S.O.S.) teams. Noting the complicated dynamics that are at play in their interactions with both the police and the communities they serve, Rahson Johnson, associate director of community safety at S.O.S. Crown Heights, and Joshua Simon, a violence interrupter with S.O.S. Bed-Stuy, are interviewed and reflect on how to bring resources to help heal the community.

"We need a vision of a better society: a future grounded in love, justice, accountability, a future grounded in safety and good health," Ashish Prashar makes the argument against incarceration and includes our Red Hook Community Justice Center and Harlem Community Justice Center as examples of successful restorative justice programs. 

Emily Bazelon, author and journalist, joins Brian Lehrer to talk about the policy and the politics around the use of restorative justice in schools and in courtrooms, looking to our Red Hook Community Justice Center and our Restorative Justice in Schools program as examples.