A conversation with Kellsie Sayers, Erica Wright, and Hillary Packer on the transformative power of restorative justice.
How can we move forward in the aftermath of harm? That question is at the heart of restorative justice, a centuries-old approach to addressing harm and conflict—from interpersonal issues to serious violence—using the power of dialogue and community.
At the Center, we use restorative justice in courts and communities to help people repair relationships and find a path forward after harm. Hear from three of the people leading that work—Kellsie Sayers, Senior Director of Restorative Practices; Deputy Director Hillary Packer; and Erica Wright, Director of Restorative Programs at the Red Hook Community Justice Center—on the transformative power of restorative justice.
What is restorative justice for those who haven’t heard of it?
KELLSIE SAYERS: Restorative justice is an intentional practice meant to address harm and conflict, where we’re centering the voices of those most impacted by harm—they’re deciding what justice looks like for them.
Restorative justice invites the person who’s responsible for harm to face the impact of their actions and take steps to make amends. But it also recognizes that we have a collective responsibility as a community to address the conditions that contributed to that harm happening.
HILLARY PACKER: It’s also a values-based practice. It really honors the way we’re interconnected and our interdependence on each other, so that we’re always mindful that one event isn’t just affecting one or two people—that whatever we do actually has ripple effects across our communities.
One common example is restorative justice circles, where people on all sides of an incident sit down with each other to talk about what happened. Can you tell us more about that and why we offer restorative justice circles in response to harm?
SAYERS: Circle practice is an intentional way of sitting in community. Particularly in the court system, folks aren’t able to tell their stories in their own voice. You have attorneys telling your story. And circle creates a space to sit in community with the person you’re in conflict with, who’s harmed you or who you’ve harmed—in addition to your supporters—to have a conversation about what happened, what the impact was, and how we’re going to move forward.
PACKER: Something else I really appreciate about circle practice is that it invites people to bring their whole selves, their culture, their faith. I think it’s really unusual to invite people—especially in connection with court—to bring their whole selves, their values and beliefs into the justice-seeking process of what we hope supports their healing path.
What are some of the outcomes you’ve seen when using restorative justice to address harm?
SAYERS: One thing we’ve seen that can be really important to folks who’ve experienced harm is the opportunity to tell their story in an authentic way—not related to the charges, not related to what the state needs to prove, but just the impact on their own life.
I also think the ability to sit with the person who caused you harm, to meet their family, to hear them acknowledge the impact of that harm—it restores a sense of safety for people. That just can’t happen in the traditional system. Those who’ve been harmed may never say, “I’m back to the person I was.” But they feel a remarkable difference. It’s like, “Okay, I can accept that this harm happened to me, and I can also believe that we live in a world where people aren’t out to get me every day.”
Even after having a prep session, people are like, “I feel so much lighter.”
ERICA WRIGHT: Oftentimes it’s easy for us to dehumanize people who have harmed someone. And during this process you get to see them, you get to see their families, you get to see that they’re not different from us. We also meet with people multiple times before the circle, so they have the opportunity to tell their stories—often for the first time in their entire lives. And we know these things are cumulative. It’s not just the one event that happened, it’s many things that led up to this, and people are able to share that and get it off their chest.
Even after having a prep session, people are like, “I feel so much lighter.” So when they actually get to the circle space, they’re more comfortable sharing their story and hearing the other side.
PACKER: We had one case—a loss of life case—with people from two different cultures, and they came together to talk about what happened. At the end of the case, the person responsible had said, “We’ve really been trying to honor your loved one with this altar, but we only have one photograph from a newspaper article.” And the family of the person who died was really moved by that, and they ended up giving them a photograph that they carry around. And now, every year, they each know what they’re doing in honor of this woman who passed. I think it’s really meaningful to both of them.
What does accountability look like through a restorative justice lens compared to typical approaches in the justice system?
SAYERS: When you’re trying to impose accountability on someone, it’s very passive. Accountability within a restorative justice framework is active—it actually requires you to do the work on yourself. It requires you to face the full impact of your actions, and then take active steps to make amends. It’s also forward-looking, so you’re responsible for addressing patterns in your behavior that contributed to that harm happening to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
We see a lot of people who have been raised on survival, and survival means you can’t be vulnerable.
At the same time, we have to deal with the fact that the larger systems have taken zero accountability for the conditions they’ve created that make it more likely for those harms to occur. We’re asking this person to take accountability, but no one’s taken accountability for the fact that their childhood looked the way it did, or that they didn’t get the education they should have in a country like ours. And that can be challenging.
WRIGHT: Accountability is hard. Some people would actually rather just go through the traditional legal system instead of a restorative justice process because it requires them to go inward. We see a lot of people who have been raised on survival, and survival means you can’t be vulnerable. With restorative justice, it’s almost like the floodgates are open. Everything I’ve been holding onto so tight—because I can’t be vulnerable—just comes out. And you really see people exhale.
What do you see as the future of restorative justice?
SAYERS: To me, the future of restorative justice here at the Center is continuing to identify and foster opportunities to respond to the most serious harm with restorative justice. We’ve had a ton of cases in the last couple of years where there’s been loss of life or significant injuries, and we’ve seen the power of what this practice does for people. So we really want to focus our attention and find pathways to healing and repair in the aftermath of serious harm.
PACKER: I can see it going a lot of different ways, and that’s the beauty of restorative justice. We recently started a project that’s restorative practices wholly in the community, with a more bottom-up design process. And I could see that happening in lots of different neighborhoods.
WRIGHT: I like to think big. I think we have so many incredible minds here in restorative justice, and I’d like to see us creating a new form of restorative practice. With all the different areas we touch and models we work in, I can really see us creating something new within that.