Restorative & Transformative Justice

“There is a myriad of ways that these forms of justice can be practiced, though they share many base philosophies. According to the Canadian federal government, restorative justice is “an approach to justice that seeks to repair harm by providing an opportunity for those harmed and those who take responsibility for the harm to communicate about and address their needs in the aftermath of a crime”.31 This definition applies across the RJ/TJ continuum. Consequently, RJ/TJ approaches to justice tend to be non-adversarial and less focused on fact-finding than the formal court system. Instead of pitting the parties involved against one another, the person who was hurt and the individual that hurt them are brought together in some manner to discuss what happened and what must be done in the aftermath of violence. Responding to the harms of sexual violence in an RJ/TJ process, therefore, can be substantially broader than the methods taken in the courts. As the purpose is to address the needs of the parties involved—and unlike in criminal law where survivors are just witnesses—punishment is not the primary focus of RJ/TJ.

RJ/TJ processes are meant to offer remedies to the harm and to prevent future violence by addressing the causes of the behaviour. The needs of both the responsible person and the survivor are considered as this is the only way to ensure that past harm to the individual and oftentimes the broader community is repaired, and future harm is prevented. Since RJ/TJ processes are meant to respond to the specific needs of the parties involved, there are a numerous ways they can be organized and run.The following are some examples of RJ/TJ options:

1) Victim-Offender Mediation: Led by trained mediators; brings survivors and people who have caused harm together to discuss the harm, the impact of the harm, and identify resolutions to address the harm; may also include indirect variations such as virtual meetings or exchanging letters.

2) Restorative Conferencing: Led by a trained facilitator or mediator; includes the survivor(s), the person who has caused harm, their supporters (such as family, friends, colleagues, community members) who all work toward reparation.

3) Circle Sentencing: Operates within Canadian common law; Elders or Knowledge Keepers are often involved; this approach has been criticized because there is an absence of Indigenous concepts of justice or Indigenous legal traditions embedded in these frameworks.

4) Community Justice Committee’s: CJCs are in operation in three Inuit Nunangat regions. An accused person or someone on probation can access CJC through the Alternative Measures program. The nature of the measure is determined by a committee in consultation with the offender and not by the courts.

5) Healing Circles: Led by a circle keeper and rooted in Indigenous legal traditions and cultural practices. Healing circles are a fundamental component of many Indigenous traditions and approaches to healing.36 Healing circles are sometimes done in conjunction with circle sentencing.

6) Pod Systems of Accountability: Small groups of support are organized for both the survivor and responsible person to help them individually heal, as well as work towards redress for the harm caused.

7) Surrogate RJ: When the survivor or the person who caused harm is unable or unwilling to participate in RJ/ TJ, they can engage in an open discussion with a surrogate. For example, a survivor may have a conversation with someone who has caused similar harm, or a person who caused harm may speak with a person who has experienced sexual assault.

8) Victim Impact Panels: A group of survivors speak to someone who has caused harm about the impact the harm has had on their lives.”

Source: Avenues to Justice LEAF Report

Here is an example of a creative RJ process by facilitator Sujatha Baliga: Watch Video

“The origin stories and the originators of RJ and TJ help illuminate their similarities and differences. The origins of RJ are connected to both Indigenous ways of understanding and doing justice and to Western yearnings for alternatives to punishment. While the history of RJ remains a matter of some debate in the RJ community, Shah and colleagues offer two distinct RJ paradigms that help to tell a more nuanced story of its development. The Indigenous paradigm, called Indigenous Peacemaking, acknowledges many Indigenous communities have been doing some version of RJ centuries before the West created the term “restorative justice.” The Indigenous paradigm sees justice as embedded in a holistic worldview in which justice and wellbeing are inextricably tied.

RJ’s Western formation began in the U.S. in the 1970s, primarily by scholars and practitioners. Many of them were white and upper-class, and they sought to make the criminal legal system more just through the development of alternatives to retributive justice. RJ in the Western paradigm developed as a relational approach to justice that understood punishment as pernicious but believed it an approach to justice that could at least theoretically be reconciled within the criminal legal system. But over the last 50 years, this strand of RJ has evolved. What began more as a social service grew into a larger justice paradigm shift, and today RJ is understood by some as a burgeoning social movement with more explicit commitments to racial justice and structural change. This evolution has meant increased respect for Indigenous Peacemaking by non-natives, as well as significant growth in RJ being practiced in communities and outside of systems — and a reckoning with the paradoxical nature of making RJ workable within harmful systems. It is our belief that the strength of RJ is deeply tied to RJ as a paradigm shift whose power and utility is made possible by social movements, not through the advancement of RJ as a service or tool.” - Cameron Rasmussen & Sonya Shah in their article “Growing Justice”

Restorative practices used in many cultures around the world for centuries, long before the British North America Act (1867) defined basic elements of our current CJS:

• Indigenous: Talking & conferencing circles

• Middle Eastern: Mediation, compensation, ‘service work’

• Ancient India: Principles of dharma & karma (action) shape mediation and dialogues (samiti or sabha)

• Pre-colonial Latin America: Mediation, guidance from council of Elders

• African: Long history of dialogues & circle processes

• Jewish: Rabbi’s as mediators, Maimonides (accountability steps) mediators (Shmagletz - Jews in Ethiopia)

• Practices also used in Celtic and Mennonite groups!

  Sources: 1,2, 3

“Like RJ, transformative justice has multiple origins stories. TJ grew out of anti-violence movements in the late 1990s and early 2000s, initiated primarily by Black women, women of color, domestic and sexual violence survivors, and queer communities, many of whom were survivors of violence. Together, they sought non-dominating, non-punitive approaches to justice entirely outside of the criminal legal system. TJ was conceived as both a relational and political approach to justice that understood punishment and the criminal legal system itself as inherently harmful. TJ’s approach thus necessitated responding to harm between people without relying on the state — the police and incarceration especially. Coming largely out different Black feminist, queer, domestic violence, organizing, and abolitionist social movements, there was an understanding that the causes of interpersonal violence were due largely to structural and state violence. With this understanding, the TJ framework assumed that the work to reduce interpersonal violence also meant challenging structural and state violence. While TJ has taken some of its ideology and practices from RJ, what makes it most distinct is its emphasis on non-state response and focus on structural and state violence.” -  Cameron Rasmussen & Sonya Shah in their article ‘Growing Justice’

5 reasons victim-survivors may prefer a Transformative Justice Approach - Written by coalition member Eleanor Danks:

1. Most traditional and punitive models of justice place the needs of the state and the rights of the accused over the needs and rights of the victim-survivor.

   Restorative & Transformative models of justice acknowledge the victim-survivor as the person who has been harmed, and places them at the centre of all decisions and processes, resulting in what can be a much more empowering experience.

2. Resisting Further Harm: Victim-survivors often describe the criminal legal system as re-traumatising and causing further harm on top of the initial acts of violence.

   Restorative & Transformative approaches hold a core value of resisting further harm, taking a trauma-informed and needs-focused approach to all parties involved, in particular the victim-survivor.

3. Invitations for Accountability: No model of justice can guarantee full accountability in every matter, as this is something that the person who caused harm must be willing and ready to do.

   However, restorative and transformative models of justice aim to create genuine opportunities for deeper accountability, through giving victim-survivors a chance to be heard, holding the humanity of all parties as important, and finding actionable ways for those who cause harm to take responsibility.

4. A Broader Definition of Harm: Traditional models of justice focus on individual acts that can be proven 'beyond reasonable doubt', with surrounding circumstances and events not being considered relevant. This often minimises the harm experienced by the victim-survivor.

   Restorative and Transformative approaches take a broader definition of harm, and view surrounding context as equally as important as the 'crime itself, resulting in a much more complete idea of the harm caused to the victim-survivor.

5. Non-Carceral Outcomes: Many victim-survivors choose not to report their experiences of sexual violence to police because they do not want the person who harmed them to go to prison.

   Restorative and Transformative approaches to justice are equipped to look at justice outcomes that are outside of the prison system, and flexible to what fit the needs and desires of the victim-survivor, as well as the circumstances of the person who caused harm, best.

Victim-survivors should always have the option of choosing the justice pathway that is right for them

Our Resource Directory is in process.

In the meantime, access resource guides here:

• Transformharm.org

• CCASA: RJ & TJ Free Introductory Training

• Transformative Justice Resources Here

• RJ Resource Guide

• Films and documentaries on Restorative Justice from EFRJ

• Living Justice Press: Books on Restorative Justice