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Feb 7, 2010: National day of prayer for criminal justice reform
from JustPeace:
Encourage your church to participate in the National Day of Prayer for Criminal Justice Reform and contact Bill Mefford for more information.
Churches throughout the United States will spend either part or all of their prayer time during their Sunday worship services on Feburary 7th to focus on criminal justice reform. Specifically they will lift up the need for a fair criminal justice system based on restorative principles that do not sentence people to unjustly long sentences or target certain racial groups, so that the families of the incarcerated can be strengthened and local communicates safely restored.
Oakland school board approves district-wide restorative justice initiative despite budget crisis
from Lillian R.Mongeau's article in OaklandNorth.net:
In other business, the board voted Wednesday night to implement a district-wide “Restorative Justice” initiative....
Restorative Justice focuses on “acknowledging that crime causes injury to people and communities, it insists that justice repair those injuries and that the parties be permitted to participate in that process,” according to the Prison Fellowship International’s Restorative Justice Online web site. In schools, this takes the form of training teachers and students to practice active communication, face-to-face reconciliation and non-punitive actions to address misconduct.
Nikita Mitchell, 16,is a junior at Castlemont High where her group, Youth Together, has been trained in restorative justice practices. She said that a key part of the program is better communication. A teacher who notices a student is upset or acting out, for instance, can enter the information into a computer system that the “teacher of record” for the restorative justice program will check daily. That teacher will then refer a trained student to have a one-on-one meeting with the upset student to talk about the problem and work on solutions like apologies, mediation, or “peacemaking circles,” in which members of the community share their feelings and come to a consensus about how to move past inappropriate actions.
