Has Restorative Justice in U.S. schools stripped 'right' and 'wrong' of all meaning?

Empty the prisons by decriminalizing crime?

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Even liberal California incarcerates more people as a percentage of its population than virtually every other country in the world. Looking for solutions to growing criminality is only sensible given such facts, but some of the solutions proposed, and imposed, seem to only be making things worse.

One such solution is restorative justice.

Depending on who is asked, restorative justice (RJ) is either as old as the hills, or an innovative modern practice representing the latest progressive ideals. What all of its proponents agree on is that restorative justice, as opposed to traditional justice, focuses on the interpersonal nature of crime, rather than crime as an abstract breaking of the rules. One popular conception of RJ is that,

In the indigenous cultures from which we spring, retributive justice may have been one option for preventing future harm and keeping us all safe: knowing there were physical, emotional or psychological punishments could at least remind us and at most frighten us into behaving as the rules required.

Progressives present restorative justice as something that builds societies and promotes cohesiveness — as opposed to the traditional form of justice which allegedly,

burdens many ex-offenders with a felony record, which robs them of employment and leads many into … future criminal behavior… 

Schools as the ‘communities’ bringing up our children

By the 1970s, academics and others were referring to traditional methods of discipline in schools as the “school to prison pipeline.” They then began thinking of ways to transition to new methods of schooling. The emphasis here, too, was not on the breaking of school rules but on the impact it has on victims as well as on the perpetrators themselves:

Restorative justice ... attends to the broken relationships between three players: the offender, the victim, and the community ... it recognizes how offenders harm victims, communities, and even themselves by their actions.

The transition to using such methods in schools reflects the progressive conception of schools not as places of learning, but as communities where members should support one another and aim together to achieve far-reaching social goals. Many conservative groups thus oppose this new vision for schools and would prefer to return to traditional methods of schooling and discipline, but restorative justice has already taken hold across the United States. It has been implemented in schools in every single state — almost 22,000 schools in 652 districts — for a total of over 13 million students affected.

‘Traditional discipline is rooted in colonialism’

One group that is closely monitoring developments is Parents Defending Education. According to them, restorative justice is:

... a philosophy for student discipline where reconciliation between the offender and the victim is the ultimate goal. This goal is theoretically achieved by conversations between the offender, the victim and others involved in the incident.

From their observations, they note that,

while restorative justice practices can be effective when dealing with minor incidents, they are largely ineffective when dealing with more disruptive and violent behavior. In many school districts, restorative justice has REPLACED exclusionary discipline in schools, so the response to a violent action in class is not a suspension or expulsion, but to clear the classroom and have a restorative conference.

They also identify RJ as one of the key components of progressive-woke ideology which views traditional discipline as rooted in “colonialism”:

“In restorative justice, reconciliation, not punishment, is the goal. The ‘Western’ view of crime and punishment is thought to be a byproduct of colonialism.” — from our “Understanding Ethnic Studies Jargon” page.

Over 1 in 5 schools never expel students

According to Education Week, use of restorative justice is increasing rapidly across the country. 

In a recent EdWeek Research Center survey, 48 percent of educators said their schools or districts are using restorative justice — which focuses on repairing harm and reconciliation through activities like small group mediation — more than in 2018-19, the last full academic year before the pandemic...

[Just] one-fifth of respondents said their schools do not and have not used restorative justice.

As Parents Defending Education notes, schools that use restorative justice more are not just using traditional disciplinary methods less — they are no longer using them at all. Twenty-two percent of schools surveyed by Education Week never expel students, while thirty-five percent of schools surveyed are expelling students less than in the past. In some parts of the country, such as New York, new regulations make it much harder for students to be expelled.

Discipline is now voluntary for students

While teachers in such schools are expected to be on board with these changes, use of restorative justice has also created new jobs for “experts” in the area, called “facilitators,” who are trained in introducing the new practices into schools.

In Fairfax County Public Schools, for instance,

... trained, skilled facilitators ... bring together those impacted by wrongdoing to discuss the incident, understand who has been affected and to create an agreement for reparation of harm.

Their project has three main goals:

1) Accountability. Restorative Justice provides direct opportunities for students who have harmed others to be accountable to those they have harmed, including themselves and their families.

The traditional understanding of accountability is that it involves consequences. Here, the only consequences are having to confess to one’s misdeed and listen to how it impacted others.

2) Character Development. The practice of Restorative Justice recognizes the need to educate students who have harmed others about the effects of disruptive behavior on those harmed, as well as on the school community. Participants in a restorative discipline process learn the underlying factors that lead to making poor decisions. They practice social skills and learn self-improvement strategies that encourage better decision-making in the future.

The next step is not to try to make amends, but to understand why things went wrong. It is assumed that if students only knew how destructive their misdeeds were, they wouldn’t have committed them. There is no concept of right or wrong, just “poor decisions” taken due to unnamed “underlying factors” which can supposedly be corrected with better social skills.

3) School and Community Safety. The practice of Restorative Justice recognizes the need to keep the school and community safe by building relationships that strengthen the school social structure. Restorative Justice creates opportunities for community involvement in the resolution of wrongdoing, and empowers students and staff members to take personal responsibility for the well-being of the school community.

Schools are being defined not as places of learning, but “communities” based on relationships. Taking responsibility is framed not as an obligation, but as something that people can only do if they are first “empowered,” though exactly how this is achieved is unclear.

Significantly, Fairfax County Public Schools stresses that (unlike tradition forms of discipline), “participation in restorative justice is always voluntary.”

A school community where teachers and students are equals …

While some teachers and facilitators view restorative justice as a new form of discipline focused on those who need to be pulled into line, others see it as a way to introduce DEI principles into schools and fundamentally reorganize the school environment.

A study conducted by researchers from the University of California, Irvine, in 2022, illustrates this conception of RJ clearly. When they speak of restorative justice, what they have in mind is the imposition of socialist principles to an extreme, where teachers and students are equals:

Restorative justice practices exhibit a continual community orientation that seeks to democratize school environments by equalizing the voices of students, educators, administrators, and staff in the school community...

… and which radiates social justice to everyone around

They also stress that their goal is not merely to keep the peace within schools, but to promote ideas of “social justice”:

Along with facilitating relationship building, restorative justice programs are based on equity and social justice principles that encourage educators to address inequities...

And they envision the impact of RJ in schools spilling over into communities:

... being responsive to the goals and needs of the local community ... is a core tenet. 

Misbehavior blamed on racist teachers

Even more revealingly, the research paper discusses the goals of RJ as the authors see it:

... this study addresses the following questions: 1) Does the implementation of restorative justice practices in schools change exclusionary discipline outcomes? and 2) Does the use of restorative justice change racial disproportionality in exclusionary discipline?

That is to say, they aim to keep all students in school (regardless of how they behave), and to ensure that no one racial group is disciplined more or less than any other.

Achieving better behavior is not even mentioned, which is perhaps not surprising, given that the underlying assumption of the authors is that it is “anti-Blackness [that] may contribute to racially divergent outcomes...”

But … does it work?

Setting aside for a moment the various motivations of those promoting RJ, many parents and teachers may still support it if it only led to better outcomes in schools — that is, better behavior by students of all races, minority or otherwise. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that RJ leads to better outcomes for most minorities (although the behavior of Asian minorities apparently has improved parallel to introduction of RJ):

... it is promising that restorative justice lowers the suspension rates of non-Black students and may eventually begin to lower Black students’ suspension rates…

The Irvine study attributes this to schools using traditional methods of discipline alongside RJ:

Further, we highlight the potential pitfalls of layering restorative justice programs on top of traditional discipline policies ... without also addressing anti-Blackness... 

What they would like to see is schools moving to exclusive use of RJ to deal with disciplinary issues:

... we believe that restorative justice is most likely to achieve its transformative potential when implemented as a replacement to the traditional ethos and practice of discipline, rather than as a supplement.

In a word: No

The study’s authors conclude that,

Although restorative justice practices show promise, the extent to which they ameliorate school discipline disparities may be contextually dependent and may take time to realize...

Education Week similarly concludes that RJ is not helping schools impose discipline:

... the results [showing increased implementation of RJ] come as schools have reported an increase in student disciplinary problems following pandemic school closures (70 percent of educators said students were misbehaving more last year than in the fall of 2019, according to a separate EdWeek Research Center Survey from 2023).

What do teachers say?

Why is RJ so ineffective with the most unruly students? Let’s see what teachers (on Reddit) have to say:

RJ is when you force the victim to tell the bully how effective the bullying is, blame (understandably) uncooperative victims for being bullied because they won't participate in the "tell the bully how you're feeling" anti-bullying program", force the victim to listen to the bully tell the victim how the victim is causing the bullying, and then force them to apologize to each other, shake hands, and promise to get along better, right?

While the victim still has the bruises, destroyed assignments, ...?

Yeah, it works about as well as you'd expect.

Children, like adults, soon figure out how to bend the new rules to their favor:

We have a few kids with extremely bad behavior and they just absolutely do not care. Nothing motivates them to get their act together ... Endless restorative conversations result in no change other than those kids figuring out what they need to say to make the adults happy...  

Peer pressure doesn't always lead to the desired result:

I’ve done the “RJ circles” thing, but by and large the students treated it like a joke — if anything, their behavior was worse during circles than during regular class. It seems to be all the rage among administrators, but… does it accomplish anything? 

If I’m putting myself in a student’s shoes, I have two options: I can accept responsibility for whatever it is I’ve done, which makes me feel icky inside… or I can NOT do that and suffer absolutely zero negative consequences! 

Don’t get me wrong, I have students who can be accountable for their actions. But they don’t need a circle to do it. And those who cannot be accountable in a one-on-one conversation are not going to suddenly be honest and vulnerable when 25 of their peers are watching.

Victims are often left traumatized and even more vulnerable than they were before:

Every single attempt at restorative justice I've ever seen has followed this path:

• The victim is dragged to the meeting before they have processed the incident.
• The instigator explains at length why it's really the victim's fault the incident occurred.
• The victim is badgered into apologizing to the instigator.
• The victim is badgered into making concessions to avoid "triggering" the instigator.
• The instigator apologizes to the victim while smirking.
• The instigator gives up some things they are already not doing to try and balance things out with the victim.
• The instigator gives the victim a rest for a few days, then goes after them harder because they have learned there's no real consequences for their poor behavior.
• The victim doesn't bother reporting further transgressions because it just results in punishment for them.

And last but certainly not least, there are no real consequences for perpetrators, and deterrence evaporates entirely:

The victim is often just re-victimized and made to feel like they have to accept an “apology” before they’re ready to. And quite frankly, there are plenty of instances where the behaviors should NOT be forgiven. Sometimes “sorry” isn’t enough. Sometimes the aggressor needs to be removed and have actual consequences like an out of school suspension.

Billions in, garbage out

Many teachers have pointed out that given the huge sums that have already been invested in RJ, administrators are very unwilling to admit that the approach is a failure:

If the defense of a policy is “we’re just not doing it right” when we’re several years and several billion dollars in, it might just actually be the underlying policy.

But where are these billions coming from? 

A large number of interest groups are actively promoting and funding RJ in the nation’s schools. Here are some:

The National Education Association, with over three million members, spent almost $3 million on lobbying in the 2022 election cycle. They describe RJ as,

Alternatives that don’t push out an excessive number of students, don’t create wide racial disparity gaps, and that overall foster a more inclusive and constructive learning environment.

The National PTA also promotes RJ, as does the School Superintendents Association, a trade association for public school leaders which has been promoting RJ for over a decade.

The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s largest teachers’ union with 1.7 million members, spent $1.45m on lobbying in 2022 election cycle when it,

RESOLVED, that the AFT will advocate for funds to place restorative justice coordinators/trainers and support staff in every school with the goal of promoting positive learning environments that foster meaningful student relationships to develop self-worth, cultivate emotional well-being, culturally relevant and culturally responsive curriculum, and help produce responsible citizens. 

And internationally, UNICEF supports RJ in schools, with a focus on the obligation of teachers to create the right atmosphere for students to succeed:

Restorative practice describes a way of being, an underpinning ethos, which enables us to build and maintain healthy relationships. It provides a strong framework within which we can promote a whole-school ethos founded on the importance of relationships...

UNICEF’s vision for schools is not as places of learning but as communities where teachers are more like pastoral counselors:

Every day, in lots of different ways, our students ask: do I matter to you, do you notice me, do I belong here?...

Schools that explicitly put a greater focus on proactively building and maintaining relationships will find that there will be fewer occasions when relationships break down and, therefore, there is less need for them to be repaired.

Right and Wrong eliminated

Schools in authoritarian societies have long been places of indoctrination rather than education. Schools that use RJ are guiding their students toward a certain perception of society where everyone is of equal status, anti-social behavior is never the perpetrator’s fault but is due to “underlying factors,” victims are obligated to forgive those who have harmed them, and “skilled and trained facilitators” guide the uninitiated toward a brighter future.

However, a deeper problem with RJ is that it warps the very concept of justice.

Justice, in all civilized societies, is based on the objective existence of right and wrong and the responsibility of the individual to obey laws that are based on right and wrong. Restorative justice reduces “justice” to a vague emotion-based system. 

In a school, or a world, run according to restorative justice, do right and wrong exist, or is it all subjective?

We may leave it to the Irvine professors to admit the truth:

… right and wrong differ according to the community concerned …