Examining the Intersectionality of Restorative and Racial Justice in Secondary Education
I. Introduction
Restorative justice has been analyzed within many educational environments, primarily to study the benefits it brings to schools in replacement of a punitive process. At the same time, there are many shortcomings that restorative justice can bring. According to David Karp’s The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities, “restorative justice is a collaborative decision-making process that includes victims, offenders, and others who are seeking to hold offenders accountable by having them accept and acknowledge responsibility for their offenses...repair the harm they caused to victims and communities, and work to...rebuild positive social ties to the community” (Karp, 2014). While restorative justice has proven to enhance community ties and relationships, it must be acknowledged that participating in the process is a privilege. In secondary schools with high racial disparities, the likelihood for a student to be offered the opportunity to engage in or benefit from restorative justice is lower. Thus, if the restorative justice process does not acknowledge the challenges that arise from racial inequality in schools, then it will ultimately perpetuate a system that undermines and disenfranchises individuals it should be seeking to empower. In this paper, I will examine the benefits of restorative justice, as well as the harms of punitive measures that fail to take into account racial inequalities within a secondary educational environment. I will then connect these shortcomings with a case study that illustrates the relationship between the percentage of minority students and the consequences of a school being less likely to use restorative justice methods. Finally, I will use these findings to propose possible solutions where restorative justice has the opportunity to remedy these racial disparities based on experimental projects other secondary schools have attempted to successfully implement.
II. The Need for Restorative Justice
The restorative justice model has shown that the need to re-evaluate the way we see and approach student behavior is crucial. Rather than focusing on punishment and sanctions, restorative justice views student misbehavior as a violation of a relationship. This, in turn, makes the process focused on how that student might work to address the harm that they may have caused to the victim and school community while simultaneously thinking of ways to mend those relationships (Payne and Welsh, 2013). Restorative justice emphasizes that maintaining positive relationships within a school community through a disciplinary system helps students adhere to school guidelines or a code of conduct. In other words, the process can only be successfully implemented if the school disciplinary system transitions from a punitive to an educational focus (Payne and Welsh, 2013). Not only does this process assist in repairing essential school relationships, but it also allows teachers to put more time and effort into their teaching (WeAreTeachers, 2019). Rather than focusing on discipline, students are more inclined to be upfront about sharing the facts around the situation. Consequently, students are more likely to take responsibility while developing important rational skills to resolve the problem (WeAreTeachers, 2019). One school with high suspension rates pursued the restorative process by utilizing speaking circles to build community. Across different school programs that focused on women’s empowerment, gender and sexuality, people of color, and other identities, students would sit in circles and share their experiences or stories without additional academic pressure being imposed on them (Watkins, 2020). This created an opportunity for student relationships to develop amongst one another as they got to learn more about themselves and their peers. Additionally, scenarios involving intervention shifted to focus on healing, processing, and learning. Methods to incorporate this focus were carried out either in the form of a conversation or mediation. For students, this form of grace was expressed in a way that showed it was okay to make mistakes as long as they learned from them. “We understand you as a human being, as a teenager,” one mediator shared while explaining the change in mentality when transitioning from a punitive to restorative system. “When we offer students that grace, it's a way of just recognizing your human capacity to learn” (Watkins, 2020).
Although restorative justice brings many benefits to a school community, one must also acknowledge the historically white focus that its movement has taken. In a world where racial tensions persist and racism divides, it is imperative that all restorative justice programs acknowledge these inequities and actively work to incorporate the narratives of marginalized voices within these spaces. If restorative justice fails to do so, then it will only perpetuate these inequalities, appear to be uninformed, and ultimately be characterized as uncaring (Davis, 2019). However, groups have come together to discuss ways in which restorative justice practices can adapt and address these needs. Some have turned to the organizational principles outlined by Black Lives Matter, which place an emphasis on working to “nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting” (BLM, 2020). These principles have helped establish a purposeful direction for the discussion of racism and restorative justice, especially among advocates and local communities looking to have these necessary conversations. In 2013, the first national justice conference was held featuring restorative justice’s intersection with race as its major theme. Consequently, this conference served as a significant turning point for the awareness around the topic itself (Davis, 2019). Since then, the number of research studies and publications around the relationship between racial and restorative justice continue to rise. With this open-minded and well-educated approach, there is hope that restorative justice will properly heal the scars racism and racial inequality have left on the education system.
III. Harms of Punitive Measures
While restorative justice has been proven to be crucial in secondary school environments, the truth is that its execution is not a simple task. Within poorly funded and overworked schools, many teachers and administrators simply do not have the resources to support a successful framework of restorative justice for their students. As a result, some of these schools tend to have the highest suspension and expulsion rates compared to their better-funded counterparts. The rationale behind this is reasonable; if you are an overworked, underpaid, and under-resourced teacher with a limited capacity or time to handle a misbehaving student, suspension or expulsion appears to be an easy solution. However, this decision can have a detrimental impact on the particular student or school community.
According to previous research, schools have placed a greater emphasis on using harsh approaches to student discipline through the use of surveillance cameras, metal detectors, armed police officers, etc (Gottfredson, 2001). Furthermore, the trend of zero-tolerance policies in schools has failed to make schools a safer place and continue to negatively impact student engagement in school. More specifically, the expansion of zero-tolerance policies from more severe offenses such as serious drug and weapons possession to now include minor offenses like over-the-counter drug possession has been detrimental (Schiff, 2018). Numerical data suggests that schools continue to follow these trends that lead to more student suspensions and expulsions. In fact, during the 2011-2012 academic year alone, U.S. student expulsions resulted in the loss of 18 million instructional days (Losen, Hodson, Keith, Morrison, & Belway, 2015). However, the loss of instructional days means more than just spending time away from school. Students who face expulsion and suspension are also more likely to be held back a grade or not graduate, while simultaneously being at greater risk for increased participation in risky behavior and decreased engagement with the school (Schiff, 2018). Similarly, research around the “school to prison pipeline” suggests that these students are also more likely to end up being punished in the criminal justice system (Payne and Welsh, 2013).
When racial disparities are acknowledged alongside these greater trends towards punitive measures in secondary schools, an alarming conclusion is drawn. More specifically, the concept of racial threat provides an explanation to how Black students tend to be more impacted by punitive measures than their white counterparts. In a study conducted by the National Household Education Survey in 2016, about 24% of Black students in elementary and secondary schools have been suspended at least once (NCES, 2016). In contrast, 8% of white students and 4% of Asian students faced the same repercussions. Racial threat predicts that a high ratio of Blacks will exacerbate public punitiveness due to the perceived criminal threat that a minority presents to the white majority (Blalock, 1970). Connecting the previous statistics with this theory, there is a clear relation that points to the fact that Black students are more likely to face harsher punitive actions given the racializing of many school disciplinary systems. As a result, schools with a large composition of Black students are less likely to implement restorative justice programs in place of severe measures (Payne and Welsh, 2013). With no intervention or attempts to redesign the system, injustices are left to play out and leave individuals at a disadvantage for generations to come.
IV. A Look into Restorative Justice Case Studies
As mentioned earlier in the paper, many researchers have turned towards analyzing the relationship between racism and the presence of restorative justice in secondary school systems. One of the first studies to focus on this topic was conducted by Allison Ann Payne and Kelly Welch in 2013. Within their research, Payne and Kelly wanted to shift away from previous research outlining the relationship between the racial composition of schools and more harsh, punitive discipline systems. Instead, they focused on analyzing data to see if a relationship could be drawn between the racial composition of schools and the likelihood of restorative justice techniques being used within a secondary school system. To conduct the study, Payne and Kelly tested five hypotheses within schools that had a higher student population ratio of black students. These five hypotheses revolved around four practices: student conferences, peer mediation, restitution, community service, and a restorative justice model reflecting an overview of all four practices. The study’s data focused on the analysis of 294 public, nonalternative secondary schools with a focus on specific variables and measures from the National Study of Delinquency Prevention in Schools (Gottfredson, 2001). However, across all four practices, the results of the study proved to be fascinating and consistent.
In hypothesis one’s testing around student conferences, Payne and Welch observed that Black student composition was significantly and negatively related to student conferences, with every 1% increase in the percentage of Black students resulting in a decrease of .95. Moreover, Payne and Welch’s fifth hypothesis provided support for the conclusion that black student composition is also significantly and negatively related to the overall practice of restorative justice in the disciplinary system. This is to say that a school that is characterized by having a greater percentage of Black students is less likely to handle student misbehavior through a restorative lens.
While restorative justice has been concluded to have a large impact on race in the secondary school system and vice versa, more can be said about the broader impacts it has on racial minorities. A separate study conducted by Berit Albrecht in 2010 took a slightly different approach to analyzing the impacts of restorative practices, with a focus centering on migrant minority populations within Norway and Finland. Using four mediation cases, Albrecht conducted informal interviews with mediators, staff, and other leaders involved in the process to understand how restorative justice plays a unique role for the migrant minorities that are ethnically diverse. Through the study, Albrecht concluded that restorative justice is an “appropriate tool” to help resolve conflicts within migrant minority communities. Through discussion and dialogue around the acknowledgment of each individual’s own perspective, culture, and identity, restorative justice allows minorities and other ethnically diverse groups to share their experiences with others, leading to a greater tolerance for cultural diversity (Albrecht, 2010). Given the important impact that restorative justice has on resolving conflict within racially diverse communities, we can apply this broader perspective to strengthen our argument in support of implementing restorative practices in order to minimize growing racial disparities within the secondary education disciplinary system.
V. Making Necessary Improvements to Restorative Justice
Throughout this paper, the structural failures of punitive measures have revealed the need for restorative justice within secondary school environments. Additionally, the intersection of racism and restorative justice practices have also revealed important considerations and adaptations that must be implemented in order to ensure that the process properly addresses the needs and perspectives of all individuals, especially those who are or have been marginalized. In one example of a predominantly Black high school with high suspension and expulsion rates, there were 166 incidents and 115 suspensions within one year. After the school implemented a restorative justice approach to disciplinary measures, there were 14 incidents and around the same number of suspensions by the third year of the program (Watkins, 2020). One of the leaders behind the launch of the school’s restorative system attributed the success of this program to the importance of giving marginalized individuals the opportunity to have a space where they can express the traumatic and sometimes difficult experiences they encounter. She explains:
“I think it is providing these young people with the space to heal with traumas that are beyond them, that are in their bloodlines, that are things that were beyond their lived experience here. And I think particularly in our schools, in addition to wanting to promote positive school culture and wanting to reduce discipline, I found myself doing this work as wanting to give kids the skills to be better ... [Being] able to build these social, emotional skills with these young people, I think is inherently racial justice work for these Black and brown kids in which investments like this aren't usually made in their communities” (Watkins, 2020).
Connecting back to Albrecht’s case study, it is clear that providing this conversational space for all perspectives to be shared is imperative to minimizing racial disparities through restorative justice. Similar to the guiding principles stated on the Black Lives Matter webpage, this insight on restorative justice within a school environment highlights how important it is to establish a nurturing environment where students are able to learn, grow, and recognize that their perspectives are unique, yet valued by others. Acknowledging this is the first step towards implementing meaningful solutions within the disciplinary system and supporting fundamental relationships that strengthen community-building across secondary schools.
In addition to creating conversational spaces for marginalized voices to feel represented within the restorative justice process, Fania Davis’s The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice: Black Lives, Healing, and US Social Transformation walks through three specific solutions to racial disparities that restorative programs should adapt. Based on a program launched by Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth, Davis argues that addressing institutional racism and implicit bias, developing district-community collaborations, and building district-university partnerships are crucial to achieving a successful restorative justice program. Davis’s first point around acknowledging institutional racism and implicit biases is a sensitive topic, but one that is crucial to ensuring that educators are properly trained to understand and unlearn their own biases that perpetuate systemic inequalities. In her book, she explains that the Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth focused on designing “whiteness trainings”. These trainings applied restorative practices where educators could explore their own biases and work to minimize the burden that people of color might face when confronting a white individual with uncomfortable, uneducated biases. While youth-focused initiatives are important when it comes to teaching and implementing restorative practices, Davis points out that it is equally important to focus on rectifying adult behavior as well.
Davis’s second point, developing district-community collaborations, takes a very hands-on approach to connecting with the broader community. Providing opportunities for schools to partner with outside organizations, such as the Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth, help to enrich school curricula and provide the resources needed to launch restorative justice programs. Additionally, these collaborations advocate for important policy changes that can empower youth activists throughout various communities to pressure governmental entities to desegregate schools, provide more educational resources, and fund restorative justice training sessions.
The third and final point that supports effective restorative programs within secondary schools is taking the opportunity to build district-university partnerships. Earlier in this paper, it was mentioned that research examining the beneficial impact restorative justice programs have on solving racial disparities within education has been limited. Only recently, through the discussion and exploration of this topic at national conferences, has restorative justice focused on analyzing its connection to racial justice. Davis argues that by having local universities conduct serious studies that further analyze this data, schools will be able to utilize this research to provide them with a better understanding and vision about what needs to be systematically changed. Moreover, this research would have the opportunity to provide a framework for policymakers to craft more equitable educational policies that would actively work to minimize racial disparities in the secondary school system.
VI. Conclusion
The secondary education system has revealed the many complexities and challenges behind disciplining student misbehavior. However, this paper has argued that we must re-evaluate the way we see and approach disciplinary action by advocating for restorative justice. The use of restorative practices not only emphasizes positive relationship building within school communities, but it also provides potential solutions to racial disparities that have become exacerbated under the punitive disciplinary model. Furthermore, this paper has outlined the ways in which the racial threat theory and increasing use of zero-tolerance policies significantly impact Black students by decreasing their opportunity to utilize restorative justice practices. Through the examination of Payne and Kelly's case study, we were able to see clear evidence pointing to the alarming, negative relationship between the racial compositions of schools and the likelihood of these schools to use restorative techniques. On the other hand, Albrecht’s case study shined an optimistic light on the positive impact that restorative justice can have for marginalized communities when they are provided with a space to acknowledge and share their experiences. By providing these important conversational spaces, addressing implicit biases, and building important community collaborations to educate others on these issues, restorative justice proves to be a promising new alternative to positively transforming discipline within secondary schools.
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