Purpose: This study facilitated restorative coordinators in co-constructing and proposing solutions to common problems in RJ implementation. Design/methodology/approach: This study used grounded theory to examine barriers to equitable restorative justice (RJ) implementation in the US. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with restorative…

Race, poverty, and gender interplay with school discipline, to make schools ancillary to the juvenile justice system (Morris and Perry 2017). Exclusionary discipline contributes to the school-to-prison nexus, a metaphor that illuminates the complex, interconnected relationship between schools and prisons (Okilwa, Khalifa, and Briscoe 2017).…

This study offers the results of a Black feminist project in humanization designed to understand administrators' role in interrupting the over-disciplining of Black girls in urban public schools. Carried out with 5 Black girls on probation and 5 Black urban school leaders, the findings suggest that the approaches the administrators used to uplift…

This document summarizes the five schools districts profiled during the 2021-2022 school year that are building walls between schools and the justice system, engaging in restorative policies and practices, working to eliminate bias and disproportionality, and providing all children with fair and equitable access to high-quality opportunities. The…

St. Louis Public Schools is an urban school district of 19,299 students. The district has a predominantly Black student population with 78% of students identifying as Black, while also being very diverse with 11% of students qualifying as English Language Learners (ELL). St. Louis has a high crime rate, including a high murder rate. This trickles…

Located in Harris, Texas, Aldine Independent School District (ISD) serves 67,130 students. Despite being categorized as a richly diverse district with vast opportunity, there are generational disadvantages regarding education attainment and economic status. Poverty is the common denominator of all students across the district, regardless of color.…

Located in southwestern Pennsylvania near the borders of Maryland and West Virginia, the district has 1,483 students, with 21% minority enrollment. The district and its students have experienced many of the problems related to the opioid epidemic, including many students being raised by grandparents due to parental drug use. The district has three…

Located in Suffolk County on Long Island, New York, Riverhead Central School District draws students from three townships: Southampton, Brookhaven and Riverhead. This suburban district has just fewer than 6,000 students and is diverse, both racially and in socioeconomic status. Demographics in the district have changed over the past 20 years or…

Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the Phoenix Union High School District (PXU) was the only high school district profiled as part of this project. The high school district is made up of 13 elementary districts that feed into it and has 11 comprehensive high schools, four small specialty schools, three micro-schools, three support schools and a digital…

This study examines how restorative practice takes shape in a single, racially diverse interdistrict school in the Northeast. It focuses on two fundamental questions: what does restorative practice look like at this school; and to whom is restorative practice applied at this school? Using critical race theory as a contextual and analytical…