Restorative and responsive human services

Abstract

Rules against violence, bullying, child abuse, and sexual assault too often fail to improve safety while escalating the numbers of individuals incarcerated, separated from their families, schools, and chances for learning and starting anew. Restorative justice methods make inroads but remain marginal or even coopted by dominant and punitive approaches, but the authors of this book demonstrate how prevention strategies and rigorous efforts to strengthen relationships and communities can better protect individuals and communities from violence and other harms. Drawing lessons from settings as diverse as a nuclear power plant meltdown, auto industry cheating on emissions, and a sports stadium riot, to foster care crises and campus sexual assault and harassment, this book shows the elements in lasting solutions that draw on knowledge and build capacities of those most affected and the concentric circles of communities, professionals, and flexible systems focused on fixing problems rather than stigmatizing individuals."Martha Minow, A.B., Ed.M., J.D. Author, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University "This groundbreaking collection from the leading theorists of responsive regulation and restorative justice offers an insightful investigation of alternatives to the prevailing punitive authoritarian approach to human services and regulation. Contributors offer impressive evidence of the benefit of an empowerment relational approach to human services as well as the ability of ordinary citizens to, in turn, demand state and market accountability -whether on behalf of nursing home residents, farmworkers, or child-welfare involved African American mothers. The book places restorative justice and responsive regulation in dialogue and examines critically overlapping goals as well as divergence. It is a must-read not only for human service providers and policy makers, but for all who seek justice and who believe in the capacity of communities to create social change."