Restorative Justice is the Proven Alternative Our Children Need

As kids return to school this month they will be met with school resource officers that roam their campuses, zero tolerance policies that threaten severe punishment, and state laws that criminalize youthful misbehavior. 

This punitive infrastructure, collectively known as retributive justice, often leads children to youth incarceration. Institutions need to look to alternatives for achieving justice. I got a glimpse of one potential brighter future for kids recently while watching a 2013 discussion between community members in Oakland.

A group of nearly 20 school administrators, mental health experts, and family members packed into an Oakland high school classroom and gathered in a circle. These folks, most of whom were Black, were there to have a roundtable conversation about and with a young Black kid from the school named Cedric, who had been recently incarcerated. 

This conversation was facilitated by Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, one of several organizations across the country advocating for alternatives to retributive punishment structures. 

Cedric was hesitant to share at first; he was worried everyone was there to “stereotype him.” As the room began to swell with love, admiration, and respect for Cedric, his worries dissipated. 

“You made me blush,” he told then Bunche High Principal Betsye Steele after she said she was going to make sure Cedric earned his high school diploma. 

Fostering this level of support is restorative justice’s whole purpose. It is a collaborative process to address wrongdoing, hold people accountable, and help people reintegrate into their communities. Unlike retributive justice, restorative justice positions community as a critical tool for helping kids and keeping them on a path toward future success.

I was not party to this conversation; I watched a video of these folks talking 13 years after the fact. The passage of time did not reduce the circle’s emotional resonance. I cried alongside those in the circle, including Cedric and his mother, because I felt the impact their words had on him. 

Cedric shouldered a heavy burden. He was worried for his mother, and worried about their ability to pay rent. Those material concerns impacted his decision making, leading to his incarceration. His uncle told him the circle was about helping Cedric “lighten that load.” 

American children, especially those who look like me and Cedric, do not receive facilitated support nearly as often as they should. Instead, kids who misbehave are removed from school and placed in juvenile detention centers, where they face violence from detention staff. Once they’re incarcerated, their chances of graduating high school plummet. 

The criminal legal system is a violent, dehumanizing process for our kids. It sacrifices their futures in favor of harsh, severe and ineffective punishment. Black and brown children, queer children and children with disabilities suffer from this system the most. 

This is why restorative justice is a beautiful and necessary alternative to punitive policies. While restorative justice doesn’t address people’s material conditions directly, it does reject demonization. 

It is young Black kids like Cedric who are most often depicted as something less than human, something deserving of swift punishment. Restorative justice rejects this framing. It reminds our most vulnerable youth of their humanity. As I wept over Cedric’s heartening circle experience, restorative justice reminded me of my humanity.

An estimated 150 restorative justice programs exist across the country, including in Washington, D.C., Maine, Connecticut, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota and Vermont. Studies show children who participate in restorative justice are much less prone to re-offend than those who were traditionally processed through the court system.  

Participants constantly sing the praises of restorative justice, including those who experienced harm. They report higher rates of satisfaction with restorative justice programs than with the criminal legal system, and these programs have reportedly led to significant reductions in PTSD, a desire for revenge, and negative emotions.

These results reaffirm the profound nature of community and solidarity. Restorative justice was transformational for Cedric 13 years ago, and it continues to be just as effective today. Perhaps we need restorative justice even more now; while youth incarceration overall has dropped, Black youth incarceration increased from 38 percent in 2003 to 46 percent in 2023. 

Several stories from the last few years illustrate the danger of school resource officers, such as one from North Carolina who body slammed a student and caused her to suffer from a seizure, or another from California who was yanking a student around and preventing her from getting up.

The violence of the criminal legal system is intolerable, especially when there is a proven alternative. Through expanded access to restorative justice, communities can provide the same wealth of support Cedric felt all those years ago. 

“I’m a person who you can relate to in school. I am also a person walking the road to success, and I reach my hand to you,” Pierre Salmieri, a fellow Bunche High classmate, told Cedric during the circle. 

That is what children need, a network of helping hands ready to guide them through difficult situations. That empathetic infrastructure won’t be widespread once the school year starts, but we can begin the work now so future children will never endure the burden of retributive justice. That mode of discipline, one that embraces dehumanization with open arms and systematically inflicts violence upon children, is wholly insufficient. We can’t let our kids’ lives be disrupted by incarceration anymore.