School Bullying is Out Of Control: How Restorative Justice Can Help / A.J. Hendry

Not to long ago there was a Change.org petition doing the rounds calling for harsher penalties and expulsion for bullies in school.

It was started by a mother whose daughter was bullied and who as a result no longer felt safe enough to return to her school.

My heart goes out to the mother in question, I feel for her and for her whanau, yet harsher penalties and expulsion alone is not the answer to the problem she is seeking to solve.

I think we can all agree that we want to prevent bullying. And I think we can also agree that if a young person bullies another, they should be held accountable. However, it is the manner which we provide that accountability which will either bring about change, or further exacerbate the problem.

If the goal is to reduce bullying in schools, than exclusion and harsher punishments is not the answer. Punitive measures mean we end up simply punishing the behaviour, while more often than not, ignoring the problem.

And the problem is not that kids bully kids. Bullying, is simply a symptom of a host of bigger problem’s which exist within our community.

You’ve heard the saying, “hurt people, hurt people.”

That saying is no less true when it comes to our children.

And though that doesn’t justify any child bullying another, the reality is that if we want to actually reduce bullying, the child’s pain has to be acknowledged. And the root of that pain needs to be addressed.

By attending to the underlying cause of the child’s behaviour, we provide the young person a pathway towards healing.

But, what about consequences? What are we teaching kids if we just allow them to get off scot free? Isn’t it unjust to provide the perpetrator with support, while the victims own suffering is left unaddressed?

Well, this is where Restorative Justice comes in.

For many people Restorative Justice is short hand for letting people off the hook. Yet, that could not be further from the truth. Whereas, punitive punishment based systems focus on punishing people for their actions, Restorative Justice involves a process of helping a person face the consequences of their actions. During a Restorative Justice process the young person will have to face the person they have hurt and hear from them how their actions have affected both the individual and their wider community. Restorative Justice focuses on working towards reconciliation, and seeks to facilitate a process where the young person is able to make things right, while keeping the voice of the one who has been hurt at the centre.

But, Restorative Justice moves past just making amends. It also seeks to restore both the victim and the perpetrator back into community with each other.

In the process, after the young person has had the opportunity to hear and understand the damage they have done, the person who has been hurt is also given the opportunity to hear from the person who hurt them. In this way the wronged individual gets an opportunity to understand the circumstances which led to the bullying behaviour.

The door to reconciliation is opened, and the opportunity for healing is given.

There is of course some circumstances where this process would not be able to be completed perfectly. Perhaps it’s not safe to have everyone in the same room together, perhaps the person who has been hurt is just not in the right space, and won’t be for a while.

This does not mean that a restorative process cannot be undergone. It just means that it will have to be dealt with in a different, perhaps more creative, way.

The key is that we support the person who has done wrong to understand the consequences of their actions, to see the damage they have done, and to work towards making amends. And on the other side, for the person who has been hurt, to have their voice heard, and to be able to vocalize what they need in order to move forward.

One of the problems with the way we do “justice” – both in schools and in wider society – is that the punishment often is completely removed from the people who have been hurt.

For example, a young person tags on school property. As punishment they get a telling off from their dean and are excluded from school for a couple of days. The punishment, though perhaps seeming fair, is punitive, and thus disconnected from the actual wrong committed. It focuses solely on punishing the behaviour. As a result, the young person doesn’t learn from the experience, and simply feel’s like they are being punished for something they perhaps don’t see as “that big a deal”.

A restorative approach would help the young person to understand how their actions affected others. To understand the stress it caused school staff to have to organize to get the tagging cleaned off in the midst of an already hectic work schedule. To understand the cost (in time, money and energy) their actions had on the people involved in addressing the situation. It would then seek to help the young person actually make amends. Which in this case might be to work out a plan to help pay back the costs, and also to help clean the tagging themselves.

But, the restorative justice approach wouldn’t just stop there. It would also take the next step of seeking to understand why the young person has behaved in this way, and supporting that person to receive the care and support that they need.
The spirit of restorative justice is to bring healing, and open the door to reconciliation.

It is about seeing what is wrong made right.

Punishing people, that’s the easy part.

Actually getting serious about justice, now that’s no small task.

A.J. Hendry