New directions in whole‐school restorative justice implementation

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21236
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Author: Heather Sattler,Thalia González,Annalise J. Buth
• Published date: 01 March 2019

RESEARCH ARTICLE

New directions in whole-school restorative justice

implementation

Thalia González

1,2

| Heather Sattler

3

| Annalise J. Buth

4

1

Politics Department, Occidental College, Los

Angeles, CA

2

Center on Poverty and Inequality, Georgetown

University Law Center, Washington, DC

3

The Alliance Schools, Milwaukee Public Schools,

Milwaukee, WI

4

Center on Negotiation and Mediation,

Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Chicago, IL

Correspondence

Thalia González, 1600 Campus Road,

Los Angeles, CA, 90041.

Email: thaliagonzalez@oxy.edu;

tg576@georgetown.edu

Research on school-based restorative justice demonstrates

that whole-school interventions are the most effective for

improving student outcomes. Despite rapid growth of

restorative justice, few studies capture more than the first

stage of implementation. This article aims to fill this gap

by presenting a multiyear case study of a small urban high

school (2011–2018). The whole-school model explores

new directions for the field by placing theory and practice

directly into academic curriculum. Further, it democratizes

restorative justice as students assume lead roles as practi-

tioners, a departure from the dominant model in schools

where restorative approaches are developed and led by

adults.

1|INTRODUCTION

Since the 1990s school-based restorative justice in the United States has been rapidly evolving

(González, 2016). Restorative justice, once characterized by a handful of pilot programs, has become

a comprehensive theory and diverse set of practices that has moved from the margins to the main-

stream of education policy. For example, a 2016 national survey found that schools in more than half

the states and the District of Columbia were in some stage of implementing restorative justice

(González, 2016). As the number of schools using various models of restorative justice has increased,

so have the terms linked to both theory and applied practices. Presently, the most commonly used

terms for school-based restorative justice include: restorative interventions (Anyon et al., 2016),

restorative practices (Jain, Bassey, Brown, & Karla, 2014; Kidde, 2017; Schumacher, 2014), restor-

ative measures (Minnesota Department of Education, 2011), restorative approaches (Fronius, Pers-

son, Guckenburg, Hurley, & Petrosino, 2016), restorative discipline (Amstutz & Mullet, 2014;

Armour, 2016), and restorative justice (González, 2012). For purposes of this article, we adopt the

term “restorative approaches”used in the Alliance School (“Alliance”) to describe its whole-school

model (Blood & Thorsborne, 2006; Morrison, 2007; Morrison & Vaandering, 2012) of restorative

justice.

Received: 31 May 2018 Revised and accepted: 9 August 2018

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21236

© 2018 Association for Conflict Resolution and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2019;36:207–220. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq 207