School-Based Initiatives in Guiding Youth: Restorative Justice and its Stakeholders

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Disparately impacting youth of color, punitive school discipline and juvenile justice policies have the unintended consequence of activating persistent cycles of incarceration, violence, and wasted lives. Formed in 2005, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth's (RJOY's) mission is to interrupt these cycles by fundamentally shifting the way our society responds to youthful wrongdoing from punitive approaches that inflict more harm to restorative approaches that repair harm.

At this briefing, a spectrum of stakeholder panelists will introduce the basic principles and practices of restorativejustice and review data on its effectiveness as a model. They will also discuss the promise and challenge of the restorative justice initiatives currently underway in Oakland and beyond, with a focus on schools.

Come Join Us To

• Receive an introduction on the basic principles of restorative justice in Alameda County and beyond, with a focus on education;
• Review principles, practices, and effectiveness of restorative justice models with the co-founder and leader of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY);
• Learn about school applications for the model from a high school–based Restorative Justice Coordinator;
• Gain perspectives from a former Alameda County Judge on restorative justice in the context of the school–to–prison pipeline;
• Learn about prospects for adoption of the restorative justice framework by the Oakland Unified School District; and
• Hear a high school student's perspective on restorative justice.

Target Audience

This program is free and open to NCG members.

Presenters

Honorable Gail Brewster Bereola is a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda. She is formerly the Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court. Having convened the County's Restorative Juvenile Justice Task Force in 2008, Judge Bereola has since been in the forefront of the movement to institutionalize restorative justice in the county's schools and justice system. Prior to her appointment to the bench in 1992, she was a trial lawyer, specializing in criminal defense and has also served as faculty for judicial education programs.

Eric Butler has successfully facilitated grief circles in response to homicide and extreme violence in Bay Area schools as part of Catholic Charities' crisis response program. A single father with two children, Eric currently is employed as an RJOY School Coordinator assigned to Excel H.S. (formerly McClymonds H.S.) in West Oakland.

Fania E. Davis, J.D., Ph.D. received her law degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1979 and practiced almost 30 years as a civil rights trial lawyer. Fania taught Restorative Justice at San Francisco's New College Law School and Indigenous Peacemaking at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Co-founder and currently Director of RJOY, Fania recently received the Ubuntu award for service to humanity. Fania's research interests include exploring the indigenous roots, particularly African, of restorative justice.

Jumoke Hinton Hodge is a member of the Oakland Unified School District Board, representing West Oakland. Jumoke's work has focused on West Oakland for the past seven years as she has promoted community school collaborations, facilitated parent and family trainings, and participated on design teams tasked with developing small schools within the Oakland Unified School District. Jumoke is also co–founder and Director of the Parent Leadership and Engagement Academy Initiative (PLEA) and recently developed the West Oakland Education Task Force (WOETF) which partners with the school district, individual school sites, community based organizations and small businesses to support parents and enhance the delivery of educational services to their children.

Nikita Mitchell is a junior at Castlemont H.S. She is a lead student organizer for Youth Together, an educational justice organization waging school change campaigns on six high school campuses in Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond, California. Nikita is leading the school change campaign at Castlemont. The goals of that campaign are to institute a Restorative Justice class and implement restorative justice as the primary student disciplinary procedure at the school.

Sponsors

Philanthropic Ventures Foundation
San Francisco Foundation
van Löben Sels/RembeRock Foundation