3 Feb, 2024

Today’s newsletter is about restorative justice and how it is working in LC. Few wins and few of our challenges…

After attending IDEC 2023, some of us were very excited to implement restorative practices that we learnt from there. Children specifically took the onus of implementing it. No wonder why, since this would mean no consequences at all. We also thought that the idea of restorative practices were very natural to our current ideologies. How else will you deal/resolve conflicts in a community where there is no authority.

With that in mind from this semester onwards, we decided to scrap all consequences and give the restorative practice a try. So Circle time and Judiciary got merged into one and is now called parliamentary meeting. This is where all general announcements and agendas are discussed. What we don’t discuss in these meetings are the complaints, which are discussed separately. They are called mediator circles.

It is the mediator’s responsibility to conduct these meetings. Mediator is an elected position. These meetings are always conducted in front of the facilitator. Mediator calls both the parties to sort the conflict/complaint. The victim first starts by explaining why he/she wrote the complaint. The person who did the wrong or harm has to listen and express why he/she did the act. Was there any intent, any unmet need, past baggage, etc.? The dialogue continues for a while and sometimes leads to altercation that is when the facilitator comes for cooling things down. Every month the mediator changes and everyone gets a flavour of the new minister. This particular month mediator circles have been irregular.

Things that are going well are: Since there are no consequences any more, no one is blackmailing anyone by saying that I will write a complaint against you. Barring a couple of kids no one really uses the LC rules as some kind of dictum to throw their weight around. Basically there is no stress. There is no policing whether or not the person did their consequence and how efficiently they did that, etc.

But the other side of the coin is that people are taking things very casually. There seem to be a thought that, oh I have to just go to these circles and say that I am sorry and that will be all. Everyone will talk for 5 minutes and I will simply listen then walk out. We have seen that many a times a child is being called again and again for the same kind of behaviour. The person at the receiving end sometimes feel compromised and not taken seriously. The victim thinks that the offender is not paying his/her dues and is instead sweetly talked to. Yes there is a lot of work that needs to be done to change the mentality and it is also going to take time.

We also have a lot of scope in terms of improving the efficiency of these meetings. These meetings happen during the individual time, so the mediator essentially gives up around half an hour of his/her time. Plus summoning individuals for these circles takes some effort. You call the victim and then search for the offender. Sometimes you have to drag a few people. Multiple people would have written complaints against a person and they all would have to wait in line to speak. Anyway, you get the point that individual time goes out of the window for all those in the circle and its like having a free play time, while others who do individual time feel left out.

So, there is a lot of work to do. Many children are also of the opinion that it is not working. But we don’t yet want to quit on it, will wait until the last of this semester.

Reminders:

Next LSH is on 10th Feb.

Until next time,