Oakland Planning Commision greenlights Fruitvale neighborhood restaurant, co-op, job-training and community center

Restore Oakland is a project of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Restaurant Opportunities Center United that aims to bring restorative economics and restorative justice through it's multi-use development.

Remodeling criminal punishment for young adult offenders

“It seeks to really create a new way of looking at the harm from crime,” said Judge Colleen Sheehan, the court’s overseer, adding that its processes will emphasize crimes’ effects on the neighborhood and amplify victims’ voices.

Can Restorative Justice positively impact student achievement?

“Our academics have soared," she said. "When I first became principal, we scored 742 on the Academic Performance Index. We wanted to become an 800 school or above. Now after having students become responsible for being peaceful, our API is 845. It works.”

From schools to prisons, restorative justice is making an impact

This is "the single most impactful process for transforming harmful behavior," Mizell said. In Northern California, a number of organizations have taken on the work of restorative justice and are leading the charge to better serve and improve their communities; helping decrease recidivism and suspension rates, and increase equity, accountability and restitution.

Increasing the practice and impact of restorative justice in schools

Upon noticing an increase with issues around disciplinary actions, a P.E. instructor in Antioch, California decided to look at a new approach. After researching restorative justice and seeing its positive outcomes, Dave Neal began utilizing restorative practices in his classes at Dallas Ranch Middle School. Now, three years later, Antioch Unified School District continues to offer restorative justice training to its teachers (most recently facilitated by SEEDS) and has plans to expand its program.

School-based restorative practices do more than just reduce suspensions

As data about the ineffectiveness of suspensions and other punitive school disciplinary methods have accumulated and concerns about the school to prison pipeline and mass incarceration have gotten louder and more insistent, schools are increasingly looking for alternative strategies for creating a climate of safety, accountability, and fairness...

California's schools are going to have to answer for more than just test scores, by the year after next. The state may also judge them on suspension rates, graduation rates, attendance and the rate at which students who are still learning English are becoming proficient...

At the beginning of this school year, Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, brought a makeshift clock to school to impress his teachers—and ended up in handcuffs. His teachers, it seemed, thought it could be a bomb, and Mohamed was interrogated without his parents present for hours. 

A new report from education site The 74 unearths data that points at schools that are more concerned with hiring police officers than counselors. The 74’s Matt Barnum examined public records for the nation’s ten largest school districts to uncover one important statistic: the ratio of counselors to security personnel...

Nancy Hanks was standing in an elevator, her eyes fixed on her cellphone, when the doors opened onto a familiar face. It was one of her former students, a boy she had expelled from the school she led in one of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods...

Not long after Zaire Harley started high school, a guidance counselor pulled her aside and asked whether she’d like to do a “circle.” Though the counselor had never met Zaire, he’d heard that trouble was brewing between her and a girl who believed Zaire was gossiping about her...