A Practitioner's Reference and Guide to Implement Restorative Justice
on Campus
Here's a call to colleges and universities to consider implementing
restorative practices on their campuses, ensuring fair treatment of
students and staff while minimizing institutional liability, protecting
the campus community, and boosting morale, from an associate dean of
student affairs who has put these models to work on his campus.
Restorative justice is a collaborative decision-making process that
includes victims, offenders, and others who are seeking to hold
offenders accountable by having them (a) accept and acknowledge
responsibility for their offenses, (b) to the best of their ability,
repair the harm they caused to victims and communities, and (c) work to
reduce the risk of re-offense by building positive social ties to the
community.
David Karp writes in his introduction, "As a student affairs
administrator, I have become deeply committed to the concept and
practice of restorative justice. I have experienced how it can work
given the very real pressures among campus conduct administrators to
manage high case loads, ensure fair treatment, minimize institutional
liability, protect the campus community, boost morale in a division with
high turnover, and help students learn from their mistakes without
creating insurmountable obstacles to their future successes."