By Andrea Grant
noteworthy
Mere inches separated Dennis Everett from a murder charge. The year was 1998, and Everett, who had spent much of his childhood in foster care, was just 18. Only “by the grace of God,” he believes, did the shots he fired at rival gang members miss their intended targets—and spare him a lifetime of guilt and regret.
That knowledge drove him to radically change his life after serving an eight-year sentence for three counts of armed assault with intent to murder. Everett co-founded a nonprofit that works with youth caught up in the same cradle-to-prison pipeline he’d faced, and helps incarcerated men grapple with the hurt they’ve caused and what to do next.
In 2010, Everett’s life took another fateful turn. That year, with the help of his wife Kat, he invited Susan Maze-Rothstein from Suffolk’s Center for Restorative Justice (CRJ) to speak at a panel hosted by his nonprofit organization. He was, he says, simply amazed by how closely their missions aligned.
Restorative justice is a community-centered practice in which victims, offenders, and stakeholders come together to address and repair harm. For Everett, it offered a way to prioritize the voices of people over the powerful systems that he felt had failed him throughout his youth, including child welfare agencies, schools, juvenile courts, and ultimately the Department of Correction.
Says Maze-Rothstein, now the center’s director: “Restorative justice isn’t centered around punishment. It’s centered around healing in community.”
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CRJ staff (front row, from left) Associate Director Carl Steidel, Founder Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Director Susan Maze-Rothstein; (back row, from left) Instructor Dana Thorsen, School Implementation Manager Ashley-Rose Salomon, Instructor Delinda Passas. Photographs by Michael J. Clarke.
| Fall 2022
The Center of a movement
In the mid-1990s, when Sociology & Criminal Justice Professor Carolyn Boyes-Watson was teaching her students about systemic racism, societal inequities, and a legal system in need of reform, she remembers thinking: “I can’t do this to my students. I can’t teach them about how truly unjust our institutions are, and just leave them with that.”
So she sought a way forward, a practical solution to offer her students and herself that was worth working toward. This year marks 25 years since she founded the Center for Restorative Justice at Suffolk.
What started as a program to bring speakers together to share best practices has grown into a nationally recognized hub of scholarship and training. Boyes-Watson has written foundational texts on restorative justice, and helped bring the concept to school districts, nonprofits, and the courts.
Central to CRJ’s philosophy is recognizing the value that each individual brings to society. Many of those concepts, Maze-Rothstein says, draw on wisdom from Indigenous cultures around the world.
Such communities, she explains, could not afford to expel members, because each had an important role to play. “Sending someone away in hate”—such as punishing an offender with imprisonment—would lead them to “come back in hate,” she says, and cause more harm to the community. So rather than banishing transgressors, they came together to find solutions and make meaningful reparations.
The CRJ has worked with hundreds of schools to train counselors and teachers in such restorative justice practices, including peacemaking circles, which teach participants how to practice conflict resolution together. “This is how we build capacity within systems,” Maze-Rothstein explains. “Restorative justice leverages people’s ability to embrace and do these practices themselves, rather than having experts come in to impose solutions.”
Last year, when Boyes-Watson announced her retirement, she tapped Maze-Rothstein to lead the CRJ into its next phase, and together they recruited Associate Director Carl Steidel, who brings deep experience in restorative justice in higher education. This summer, the center graduated its first cohort of practitioners from its new Professional Certificate in Restorative Justice Practice program.
Linda Barber, recent certificate program graduate and former principal of the Browne Middle School in Chelsea, gives the example of a student who was repeatedly writing graffiti in a school hallway. What would benefit that student more, she posed: an academically disruptive suspension, or talking with teachers, parents, and the school custodian to understand why the behavior is harmful and to develop a plan for cleaning the walls?
Schooled in restorative justice
Restorative justice can help disrupt the cradle-to-prison pipeline by keeping kids in classrooms, addressing disciplinary problems through dialogue, and making offenders take responsibility for remedying the harm they cause.
This effort is critical not just to helping individuals but also to addressing systemic disparities in punishment. According to a 2021 report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, students in the US lost a total of more than 11 million school days of instruction due to out-of-school suspensions during the 2015-16 school year. But Black secondary students were far more likely to serve suspensions, an average of 103 days per 100 students compared to just 21 days for their white peers. Rates were also much higher for other students of color and those with disabilities.
Lourenço Garcia, assistant superintendent of equity and inclusion at Revere Public Schools, is working with the CRJ to help level the playing field in his district, where a majority of students are immigrants or first-generation Americans. Restorative justice practices help break down language and cultural barriers to establish mutual trust and understanding, he says.
He has sent many teachers for training with the CRJ, along with some students who return and model what they learn with peers. Since implementing restorative justice practices in his schools, Garcia says the culture is moving away from a punitive one driven by disciplinary codes toward an empathetic one in which students and their experiences are valued. He has seen such positive results—for behavior, retention, and morale—that he’s bringing Barber on this year as a full-time restorative justice coach.
It’s relatively easy to see the practical and developmental benefits of restorative justice in schools, but can the same approach be applied to adults whose crimes cause deep harm?
Practitioner Kara Hayes believes so. A coach and trainer in the CRJ and director of restorative justice practices for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, Hayes teaches colleagues how to incorporate circles and other restorative practices into the criminal legal system. As a survivor of violence and abuse and a longtime victims’ advocate, she says restorative justice can center the experiences of those who have been harmed.
Recently, Hayes conducted a circle at the request of a person who had been unjustly imprisoned for three decades based on false evidence. She brought the man together with the person who’d been coerced into providing that evidence as a young teen, who was now a middle-age man who has carried the guilt of that act for his entire adult life. Creating shared understanding cannot always repair the harm done or lead to forgiveness, but it is an important first step that has the potential to help both parties move forward.
This spring, the Suffolk County DA’s Office announced a restorative justice pilot program for courts in Charlestown, Chelsea, and Roxbury. Hayes says it’s a natural progression of work she and her colleagues have been doing for years, which has gained attention since the murder of George Floyd fueled more discussions about systemic reform.
“We’re at a moment where this is catching fire in our culture,” Hayes says. “The center is unfailingly restorative and kind, and captures the best principles of this work.”
Beyond the classroom
Where does a circle begin?
Newly appointed Center for Restorative Justice Director Susan Maze-Rothstein says the basic concepts of the circle method are simple, but that incorporating the practice successfully requires intentionality, openness, and continuous effort. That starts with the beliefs one brings into each circle. Founder Carolyn Boyes-Watson and her collaborator Kay Pranis developed a set of seven core assumptions each participant should accept as they begin:
Boyes-Watson estimates that she and trainers at the CRJ have educated thousands of participants-turned-practitioners over the last 25 years. For someone who lives the program’s philosophy so fully, eschewing individual renown for group wisdom and valuing knowledge transfer over guarding her own expertise, it’s a staggering legacy.
Maze-Rothstein says that in its first decade, the CRJ was pivotal in explaining and promoting the concept of restorative justice; in its second decade, the center focused on how to implement it within systems. While continuing that vital work, she also has a vision for the next stage of the process: bringing restorative justice back to its community roots. Nascent efforts are already underway to establish circle practice in the Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, bringing generations together to address complex issues like public safety.
That’s an evolution that makes sense to Everett, the former gang member whose life has come full circle thanks in part to the center. Today, he is a devoted husband and father of seven. Some of his former rival gang members are parents now, too. He sees them out in his community. They’re not friends, but they are no longer enemies.
He recently completed the center’s professional certificate program and began work training colleagues in his role as director of restorative justice for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.
“Restorative justice is a way for people behind those prison walls to grow,” he says. “There’s a lot of work to be done, and I believe people who are living in these lands are passionate and beyond capable of building the transformation necessary to curate a restorative culture and community that benefits all.”
The ripple effect
1) The true self in everyone is good, wise, and powerful.
2) The world is profoundly interconnected.
3) All human beings have a deep desire to be in a good relationship.
4) All human beings have gifts, and everyone is needed for what they bring.
5) Everything we need to make positive change is already here.
6) Human beings are holistic.
7)We need practices to build habits of living from the core self.
CRJ Director Susan Maze-Rothstein
CRJ Founder Carolyn Boyes-Watson