Restorative Justice in Schools and the Factors That Influence Their Implementation
Introduction
There have been many previous research studies that show that using restorative justice techniques in schools, rather than punitive ones, are more effective in in decreasing student delinquency. Punitive practice makes it more likely for students to end up in the school-to-prison pipeline, where students who experience expulsion or suspension are more likely to be punished by the criminal justice system. Unlike punitive practice, which circles around harsh punishments on the offender, restorative justice “strive(s) to repair the harm caused by an offense while preventing further offenses from occurring, generally through reconciliation conferences…” (Karp & Frank, 2015; Sherman, 2003). The ultimate goal of restorative justice is to build positive emotions and relationships between the offender, victim and community, while removing negative ones. Rather than having the offender suspended and removed from the community to then come back with nothing changed, they are to be gathered with the community and express empathy for each other. Having the offender look at the damage they have caused, reflect of their actions and later be reconciled back with the community.
In their article, The Effect of School Conditions on the Use of Restorative Justice in Schools, Professors Allison Anne Payne and Kelly Welch conduct a study that takes a look at why schools do not implement restorative justice, even though there’s research that proves it improves academic performance and reduces violence. They examine the factors that influence the implementation of restorative justice in schools, specifically the school structure, student and faculty characteristics and community traits.
Sample Population
The schools used in this study were schools that remained after specific processes in collecting data. Initially, 1,287 schools chosen from a mailing list by the Market Data Retrieval. Some schools were then removed depending on whether their principals, teachers and students responded to surveys and questionnaires sent to them. Elementary, alternative schools for disruptive students, private and religious schools were removed from analysis due to different factors such as different norms or containing a large number of outliers. In end, the final sample consisted of 263 public, nonalternative secondary schools.
Methods Used and Data Analyzed
The methods used to collect data consisted on questionnaires and research. To collect data from the school itself, Payne and Welch gave questionnaires to the principals and teachers. These questionnaires had questions that asked for information about grade levels, the percentage of Black Students, Hispanic students, percentage of students who have free/reduced price meals, percentage of female teachers and percentage of male’s students to create multiple factors.
To collect the data about the community of the schools, the authors had to do research. They had looked at multiple variables such as welfare, rate of female-headed households, median income, poverty and divorce rate from the 1990 Census to then create the Concentrated Disadvantage variable. Next, they created the factor Urbanicity, based on the 1990 Census data, that included population size, urban level and proportion living in urban areas.
Lastly, they had looked at Student Crime, which was based on a both violence experienced by teachers and students. The first variable is teacher victimization, where a teacher fills out a questionnaire asking about the number of times, they experienced violence or acts of incivility in the current school year. The second variable was student victimization which had asked the student the amount of different times they experienced a crime, ranging from theft, attack, in the current school year.
Results of the Study
The data tables provided in the article show that for each 1% increase in the percentage of Black students, the odds of the student using restitution decreases by a factor of 0.923. For each 1% increase of Hispanic students, there is a decrease by a factor of 0.935 in the odds of using peer meditation, and for each 1% increase of free or reduced-price lunched, there is a decrease by a factor of 0.978 in the odds of using peer meditation. Other factors show that for each additional taught, the rate of the school using restitution to address student violence increases by a factor of 1.053.
What can be concluded from this study is that as the percentage of Black students, Hispanic students and students who receive free or reduced-price lunches increases, then the likelihood of the school responding to student misdemeanor through a restorative justice approach decreases. The other factors such as the community characteristics, grade level of the school and the percentage of school students being male, DO NOT have an effect or influence on whether a school will use restorative justice when dealing with student violence.
Limitations of the Study
Some limitations of this study are that there are some schools that did not reply to the questionnaire given to them, meaning that their results might not be accurate. For example, schools in communities that are majority female-headed households, were more likely to not reply to the questionnaire. Another limitation addressed by the article was that the principle didn’t specify whether the whole school was using a restorative approach or if there were just some teachers in the school who used a restorative approach by their choice.
Main Idea
The main focus of this article is restorative justice and identifying the factors that are most influential in whether a school will use restorative justice to combat student violations, rather than a punitive approach. Schools are more likely to use punitive approach when dealing with student violations if their student make up has more students of color and are students who have reduced-price lunches. Overall, schools should adopt a restorative justice system, which is more beneficial because it keeps students out of the school-to-prison pipeline, and helps reduce student offending, enhance learning and remove any disadvantages of learning for certain students.
My Opinions on the Article and Results
I agree that the methods that the authors had used to choose the schools for the study didn’t seemed biased or leaned due to the fact that they had sent questionnaires to schools that they found through Market Data Retrieval. But the part which I did not really react well to was when they had addressed that the majority of schools that did not respond to the questionnaires, which were schools in majority female-headed household communities, stating that if they were included, they wouldn’t really affect the results. I guess I didn’t like this because it was mainly an assumption. But eventually, later on they did more research and studies back it up their claim, which I guess was makes up for it.
Connection to Class Topics
I’d say that this article relates to the readings and discussions in my HED 120 class because, in class we mainly talk about how the troubles that students of color face when they enter the STEM field. While in class we talk about the stigma of being either a student of color in the STEM field, this article talks about those same students in high school being treated like criminals. Schools are more likely to use a punitive approach to combat student violence if their percentage of colored students are higher. This is a disadvantage because students of color are more likely to be in the school-to-prison pipeline than their white counterparts.
Questions Raised
One question that was raised was whether schools are aware of the problems that punitive approaches cause. The youth are malleable and if they are treated like criminals whenever they get in trouble, then they are more likely to act like criminals when they are older. In addition, if schools are aware, then are they actually doing anything about it? I would be interested in learning about any changes or work done in combating the school-to-prison pipeline.
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