By Julie Schaffer
Restorative Justice facilitator and trainer  | restorativelensconsulting@gmail.com

Together we can Build Restorative Communities

In today’s world, communities face growing divides, misunderstandings, and unresolved harm. How can we move forward together in a way that fosters healing, accountability, and genuine connection? The answer lies in restorative practices and circle work, which we will explore at this year’s Equity for All event on April 17, 2025.

What Are Restorative Practices?

Below is a brief overview of Restorative Justice (RJ) and its proactive counterpart, Restorative Practices (RP).

Restorative Justice has deep roots in indigenous practices around the world, with an emphasis on healing and community accountability over punishment. RJ is grounded in the assumptions that 1) everything in our world is interconnected; and 2) everything is interdependent. Interconnectedness means that our actions impact the people and environment around us, beyond what we can directly see or experience. Our thoughts, words, and actions have the power to create healing, or harm. Through the lens of RJ, interdependence means that every human is needed for their unique gifts and perspectives. When everyone is given the space to act from their truest and highest nature, we are stronger and healthier as a collective.

When we ground in these assumptions, our response to wrongdoing naturally focuses on how the wrongdoing impacted individuals, relationships, and the broader community. When there is harm, a Restorative Justice approach asks: Who and what relationships were harmed? What do people need to repair that harm? What obligations does this create for the people directly involved, as well as the broader community?

A Restorative Justice process will then create an opportunity for the people who were most impacted to play an active role in determining what they need - to heal, to feel safe, to feel whole - and to have an opportunity to have those needs met, either by the person who caused harm or by the broader community. For the person who caused harm, the aim of a Restorative Justice process is to provide an opportunity for that person to understand the impact that they had/continue to have on others, to take meaningful accountability, and to play an active role in repairing the harm and preventing future harm. By doing so, they are able to become more than the act they committed.

The RJ response to wrongdoing differs from a punitive response. A punitive response asks: What law or rule was broken? Who did it? What punishment or consequence should be imposed? The consequence is imposed by an external decision- maker/system and is typically intended to cause an “appropriate” degree of harm to the person who caused harm (eye for an eye). In a punitive system, the impacted individuals have a very passive, or non-existent, role in the process.

As we see above, Restorative Justice offers an alternative response to wrongdoing and harm. But its principles, when applied in our daily lives, can also go a long way in preventing harm. If we act from the assumptions of interconnectedness and interdependence, we have the opportunity to create a very different world. This is where the term “Restorative Practices” comes in – “Restorative Practices” is grounded in the same values and assumptions as restorative justice, but its scope is broader to include proactive strategies to prevent conflict through intentional relationship-building, whereas restorative justice focuses on our response to harm.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Spokane NAACP's Building Restorative Communities Initiative for leading this work in our community and for supporting this event. If you would like to learn more about RP and experience a RP Circle process, please contact brcspokane@gmail.com.