Restorative Justice
Teen Court uses restorative justice practices. As a part of the Alachua County Teen Court campaign, one of the things we want to look at is how restorative justice practices can lessen youth falling into a cycle of mass incarceration and highlighting why restorative justice practices are more beneficial for youth offenders.
Picture it like this:
There's a garden filled with many different types of flowers. Each of the flowers represent a person in society. Just like with flowers, people come in all different forms. Some of the flowers in the garden have grown beautifully and are thriving. This represents the people who have successfully overcome challenges and they're living a good life for the most part.
However, as you continue to look at the garden, you notice that there are some flowers that are weeping over, the pedals are falling off and they're slowing starting to be taken over by the weeds and grass. This represents the people who have been thrown in jail and are being impacted by mass incarceration. They struggled to overcome challenges in their life and faced barriers causing them to not thrive as much as the other flowers (people) in the garden.
But restorative justice comes in to save those people. This can be represented by a person who comes out to the garden and waters and supports the flowers that were overlooked and damaged. Over time, these flowers begin to grow and thrive like the other flowers in the garden because someone took the time to nurture them back to life. This is the same concept when it comes to restorative justice for people. It just takes one person or one program like teen court to find the issues a person has faced that may have led them to committing a crime and help them grow from their mistakes.
"Today, each year in America, police arrest more than one million juveniles (US Dep’t of Justice: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Pre-vention, Statistical Briefing Book: Juvenile Arrests), and about 250,000 of those kids are charged with a crime and processed in adult court (Campaign for Youth Justice, Key Facts: Youth in the Justice System)."
According to the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, '"Mass incarceration' refers to the reality that the United States criminalizes and incarcerates more of its own people than any other country in the history of the world and inflicts that enormous harm primarily on the most vulnerable among us: poor people of color."
To be incarcerated means to be locked away in prison but mass incarceration is referring to the large amount of people placed in prison.
Restorative justice is a different way to handle people who commit a crime by giving them a second chance to right their wrongs and become better citizens in society. Restorative justice practices are especially important for youth because they are young and sometimes grow up in negative situations and with no support so restorative justice programs like teen court can get to the root of the issues and provide them support to overcome their challenges.
According to Mark Marini who is an Intervention Specialist at Albemarle High School, he says restorative justice deals with the 3 R's: Restore, Rebuild and Reconnect.
Image Credit: psychologytoday.com
This image above of the scales represents how restorative justice works. The victim and offender are able to come together and apologize and accept apologies which leads to the offender making things right with their community. Once the offender is able to work on themselves, find out the root of their issues and gain support to improve themselves, they can successfully be good members of society, which is why teen court advocates for restorative justice practices.