The National Center on Restorative Justice’s inaugural institute on the topic of restorative approaches to policing. Structured as a virtual “think tank,” we invited restorative justice and policing experts from across the United States who use restorative approaches in policing in a variety of models to participate. These experts included police leaders, restorative justice nonprofit partners, and academics with a specialty in restorative approaches in policing. Participants identified the most pressing issues and questions nationally related to policing to help shape the following institute. From this inaugural institute, we produced a restorative policing reference list that links research, approach outlines,…

The National Center on Restorative Justice and the Center for Justice Reform at Vermont Law School hosted our first Visiting Scholar, Dr. Brunilda Pali from Belgium. Dr. Pali is a Senior Researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium) and a Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). During her visit, Dr. Pali gave this public seminar and met with VLS students, as well as members of the VLS environmental law faculty. You can watch the seminar here.

The second event in the National Center on Restorative Justice 2021 institute series on Restorative Approaches to Policing. This public institute was attended virtually by over 300 participants and included live-streamed keynote and panel presentations, break-out sessions for discussion, and skills-based workshops. Three key models of restorative justice in policing were featured: Police-nonprofit partnerships that enable police to directly refer cases to restorative justice programs; Police-community dialogues to rebuild trust in law enforcement; Restorative practices by police to take responsibility for current and historical harm caused by their departments. You can watch videos of the institute here. You can read…