By Jessica Laus
I grew up in a dilapidated old house with my extended family in Detroit during the 1990s, down the street from a brass foundry and a few blocks away from both a Chrysler factory and the Detroit River. I skipped pre-school and kindergarten, and although my mother read to me every night before bedtime, my reading skills were not up to par when I entered first grade.
I remember joining my grandmothers on their trips to the local food pantries and rummage sales, and bringing home leftovers from church functions. Looking back, I was exposed to a number of adverse childhood experiences due to the cyclical nature of unaddressed trauma and violence within families and communities.
Apart from the steadfast kindness of my maternal grandmother, as well as the resiliency and hard work of my mother, it was a small Quaker school in Detroit, which utilized practices of restorative justice, that kept me grounded in a community of supportive adults dedicated to my educational success, emotional growth and psychological safety within the school’s walls and beyond.
If it weren’t for restorative justice, I could have easily become just another statistic.
Rooted in practices of Indigenous societies, restorative justice addresses not just the wrongdoing of an action, but the harm it causes. It resolves conflict through dialogue instead of punishment, and emphasizes the opportunity for those who have been harmed or those who have caused it to communicate and achieve a space of healing – and sometimes forgiveness. The focus is not one of control, dominance, and punishment – but empathy, growth, and understanding.
When I acted out in school, I documented my actions or was pulled aside by a teacher to create an immediate space for accountability. Incidents of bullying were met with conversations rather than suspensions, and the one or two punitive disciplinary actions that I remember were utilized only as a last resort.
I witnessed firsthand how these practices created a safe environment where each student was allowed space to learn and grow and develop a shared sense of belonging and understanding — and potentially become less likely to commit harmful acts in the future.
My experiences should not be unique. Restorative justice practices can be beneficial not only within schools but in the justice system and the larger community, before or after an act of violence.
That’s why, alongside the New Jersey Restorative Justice Network — an organization that educates and advocates for restorative justice in New Jersey — I urge Gov. Phil Murphy and New Jersey’s legislature to invest in community-based restorative justice approaches for youth, including our Black and brown kids that are disproportionately impacted by the youth justice system, by passing the Restorative and Transformative Justice for Youths and Communities Pilot Program bill (A4663/S2924).
This bill is particularly necessary in New Jersey where Black youth are 21 times, and Latina/Latino youth four times, more likely to be locked up than white youth, even though they commit most offenses at similar rates — some of the highest disparities in the country. Yet while New Jersey will spend $300,000 to incarcerate each youth this year, it is reducing funding for community-based programs that would help keep youth out of the system in the first place.
We are moving in the wrong direction.
The pending Restorative and Transformative Justice bill would help steer us back toward progress by appropriating $8.4 million — about 20% of the youth prison budget — for a two-year pilot program that would establish enhanced reentry services, as well as restorative justice hubs, in four target New Jersey cities: Camden, Newark, Paterson and Trenton. The hubs would be physical spaces where youth and families can resolve conflict, heal, reconnect and build healthy relationships.
There will also be funding to provide supportive reentry services for the young people who, under a new law, are currently being released from youth prisons due to their vulnerability to COVID-19. As of January 31 of this year, 75 youth and 186 staff members have tested positive for the virus across the state’s juvenile justice facilities
As the population in youth prisons declines, surplus funding should follow young people back to their communities and be reallocated to fund programs that facilitate relationship building, support healing, strengthen communities and divert youth away from the justice system.
This bill can be the beginning of a new trend in New Jersey to build up our kids instead of tearing them down. It would be a win-win for youth and our communities overall.
I regularly thank my mother for having the foresight to send me to a school that utilized practices of restorative justice. Please go here to help us pass A4663/S2924 so that New Jersey kids can have the same opportunity to heal, learn, and grow in a community that I did.
Jessica Laus is a development professional and community advocate based in Newark. She is a co-chair of the New Jersey Restorative Justice Network (NJ-RJN), an organization working to expand the practices of restorative justice across the state through advocacy, education, and by connecting organizations and practitioners.
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