Not Guilty: Are the Acquitted Innocent? is an excellent new book by Dan Givelber* Northeastern Law School professor, and Amy Farrell Northeastern Criminal Justice School professor.
In this easy to read book, the authors provide valuable information and insights into how judges and juries behave, and how understanding acquittals better (acquittals occur once in every [...]

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Bruce Feiler’s March 17, 2013 New York Times article about happy families and how they influence individual family member’s health and happiness, supports our restorative justice and solution focused work http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/fashion/the-family-stories-that-bind-us-this-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Feiler discusses how one night he pondered: “What is the secret sauce that holds a family together? What are the ingredients that make some families [...]

Paul Tullis wrote a fascinating article for the New York Times Magazine about restorative justice and its use in the “plea agreement” (aka plea bargain) stage (prior to conviction and sentencing) of a murder case. Can Forgiveness Play a Role in the Criminal Justice System? describes a restorative process at the plea agreement stage in [...]

Hawai’i’s daily newspaper The Star Advertiser published an oped I wrote on Sunday February 3, 2013, about the need for restorative justice in schools. The piece is reprinted below.
Howard Zehr also wrote an interesting blog about “Restoration is a metaphor” recently https://emu.edu/now/restorative-justice/2013/01/31/restoration-is-a-metaphor/ and in it he announced a  webinar will air on February 27, 2013 [...]

Thank you for expressing your opinion on this Mr. Bruno. Alternatively please consider that restorative justice and positive behavior support approaches for schools are consistent and that they compliment each other.
Instead of framing this as: “’Restorative Justice’ Vs. PBIS,” I suggest: “Restorative Justice for Positive Behavior Support” and have just published an individual blog [...]

“Oh yes, I would like to talk to them!” says Karen Klein (fn.1) She is the 68-year-old school bus monitor from Rochester, New York who four middle school boys mercilessly ridiculed, swore at, and even poked, recently.
Over 8 million people have viewed the You Tube(fn.2) of the incident tapped by a boy who [...]

My experience in working in Hawai’i prisons since the late 1970s (before the “war on drugs” when we had less than 20 women imprisoned in our state compared with about 600 today), and visiting many prisons on all continents except Africa, is that most imprisoned people are poor people. The legal [...]

The February 5, 2012 New York Times article by Kovaleski et al, For Killers’ Families, Struggles With Shame, Silence and Fear http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/us/killers-families-left-to-confront-fear-and-shame.html?ref=us shows why we need restorative justice.
The article describes how family members are also harmed by their loved one’s criminal behavior. It shows the need for restorative interventions that can help many families deal [...]

The draw for me to sit with people who face terrible loss, or who are facing their terrible behavior, is deep. Every time I do it I am inspired. It has touched me in extremely profound ways. Some people have commented on this work, e.g. http://www.oprah.com/own-confronting/Colleen-Meets-Her-Husbands-Killer, and asked me “How can you do it?” They [...]

In January 2011 I was asked to work with three people to facilitate a restorative dialogue (a.k.a. victim offender mediation) at Walla Walla prison in Washington State. The dialogue was filmed for Confronting on the Oprah Winfrey Network http://www.oprah.com/own-confronting/Colleen-Meets-Her-Husbands-Killer
Colleen Shapel’s husband Bob, who was also her best friend for most of her life, was senselessly [...]