Keeping the ‘J’ in RJ
This is a blog by our Training and Service Coordinator, Mark Hamill.
In the world in which the majority of you and I both work, the world of Restorative Justice, I have recently noted a marked shying away from the term ‘Restorative Justice’ in preference for ‘Restorative Practice’. Of course, for many years, this has been common parlance in schools who wish to distinguish their restorative work from that which happens within the ‘justice system’. But, of late, I have also encountered the same phenomenon in discussions with youth justice professionals. They inform me that ‘Restorative Justice’ does not adequately capture how they work restoratively with victims, children, parents and colleagues. It suffices for a specific meeting but, for them, as RJ practitioners, Restorative Practice is what they mostly do. They are proud to tell me that all their colleagues – case managers, substance misuse workers, mental health workers, etc. – also work in this restorative way.
There is much to unpack from such conversations, some of it is highly positive (it is always better to work restoratively with people than not to) but they also raise the question: ‘What is lost when ‘justice’ is dropped from Restorative Justice?’.
In her seminal book, Just Schools, Belinda Hopkins cautions against the perception of RJ as ‘a tool to use on young people’. Instead, she informs readers that the process of becoming a restorative school starts from its value base. Dropping ‘justice’ in favour of ‘practice’ risks losing sight of a foundational value of restorative work and encouraging an instrumentalist approach. Conscious of this risk, some proponents, such as Kathy Evans and Dorothy Vanndering, prefer to label the restorative work that happens in school ‘RJE’ (Restorative Justice in Education).
Often, in my experience, the structure of initial RJ training tends to focus on ‘skills practice’ and allows only limited time and space needed for reflection upon the values that give the practice its distinctiveness. The value of justice is, of course, open to interpretation but, when considered in depth, other values flow naturally from it – fairness, respect, honesty, accountability. Retaining ‘justice’ in Restorative Justice also helps to remind us to ‘widen the lens’ of our restorative work in an environment or wider world where justice does not prevail and is denied to so many. Just Schools as a title cleverly captures this idea and begs the question: How just are our schools? And, even wider still, how just is our education system? Our society? Our world? I appreciate that in the term ‘Restorative Justice’, ‘Restorative’ is doing most of the heavy lifting but I believe that ‘justice’ gives ‘restorative’ a far greater reach than either ‘practice(s)’ or ‘approaches’ ever will.
Why me? are currently involved in a project introducing restorative approaches into a pupil referral unit, all of whose pupils have been permanently excluded from mainstream schools. It is well known that being excluded has a significant impact upon the lives of children and that certain groups are overrepresented in the data. However, it is our belief that by adopting a whole-school restorative approach, the school can help the children overcome personal barriers to learning and, subsequently, some of the social injustices that affect their lives. We wish for it to be a Just School.
In arguing for the retention of the J in RJ, I find myself contrarily in allyship with the authors of Harm to Healing, a recently published report that drops the J from CJS, our criminal justice system. The authors wish to reclaim the value of justice from a system which, as is well established, systematically denies justice to racially minoritized communities. They refer to this system as our criminal legal system. We at Why me? support their efforts and those of the many Black-led organisations that feature in the report.