Justice & Peacebuilding Series

Family group conferences (FGCs) are the primary forum in New Zealand for dealing with juvenile crime, as well as child welfare issues. This third volume in the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series is about the juvenile justice system that is built around these conferences. Since their introduction in New Zealand, family group conferences have been adopted and adapted in many places throughout the world. They have been applied in many arenas including child welfare, school discipline, and criminal justice, both juvenile and adult.

Howard Zehr proposes workable principles and practices for making restorative justice possible in this revised and updated edition of his best-selling, seminal book on the movement. Restorative justice, with its emphasis on identifying the justice needs of everyone involved in a crime, is a worldwide movement of growing influence that is helping victims and communities heal, while holding criminals accountable for their actions. This is not soft-on-crime, feel-good philosophy, but rather a concrete effort to bring justice and healing to everyone involved in a crime.

Victim offender dialogues have been developed as a way to hold offenders accountable to the person they have harmed and to give victims a voice about how to put things right. It is a way of acknowledging the importance of the relationship, of the connection which crime creates. Granted, the relationship is a negative one, but there is a relationship. Amstutz has been a practitioner and a teacher in the field for more than 20 years. This excellent audio resource draws on her experience and contributes indispensably to the Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding Series.

Our ancestors gathered around a fire in a circle, families gather around their kitchen tables in circles, and now we are gathering in circles as communities to solve problems. This peacemaking practice draws on the ancient Native American tradition of a talking piece and combines that with concepts of democracy and inclusivity.

Much more than a response to harm, restorative justice nurtures relational, interconnected school cultures. The wisdom embedded within its principles and practices is being welcomed at a time when exclusionary discipline and zero-tolerance policies are recognized as perpetuating student apathy, disproportionality, and the school-to-prison pipeline.