Restorative Justice & the Space for Change Program

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Bigger Context: What & Why?

Prioritizing Safety, Emphasizing Consent, & Responding to Institutional Violence

Unfortunately, where domestic violence is happening, mediation and couple’s counseling aren’t very helpful. This is because mediation and couple’s counseling both require the people involved to have equal power in the relationship: that is, each person has the same level of decision-making ability about the relationship and neither person is experiencing the kind of fear which would undermine their ability to freely make choices, including choices that might upset the other person. Because domestic violence is fundamentally about one person having power and another person experiencing fear because of that imbalance, mediation and counseling are often unable to get to the root causes of the violence.

However, the legal system isn’t always a safer option, either, especially for people who have experienced harm from the legal system. So if mediation, couple’s counseling, and the legal system aren’t options for someone, what else is left?

Community-Based Responses for Safety & Change

People who historically have been unable to rely on the legal system have been very effective in coming up with a wide variety of alternatives to address domestic violence within their own communities. This includes (but is not limited to) Black and Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ folks, sex workers, and prison abolitionists.

You may already be familiar with the terms below, or you might be encountering them for the first time. There are no strict definitions for these, so for the sake of clarity, here’s how Walnut Avenue and the CRC are using them:

  • Community Accountability
    A community-based (i.e. not involving courts or law enforcement) strategy of addressing harm that occurs within a community, and this strategy intervenes without external system authorities, such as the prison system.

  • Restorative Justice
    Identifying the harm that was done and addressing the needs of victim and offender to heal. Restorative justice models have become increasingly common forms for court diversion programs, such as victim-offender dialogues (VODs).

  • Transformative Justice
    Transformative justice builds on the principles of restorative justice with the additional goals of transforming the person who’s caused harm to prevent recidivism as well as the community itself. This means changing unhealthy social norms within the community which allow violence to occur. Transformative justice also aims to put the power for change and accountability into the hands of the community itself and the people affected, thereby limiting or outright removing the need for state interventions.

Some of the principles of transformative justice include:

  • Violence is a choice and a learned behavior, which means change is possible under certain conditions

  • The occurrence of violence involves social and collective factors, not just personal ones; both areas must be addressed to prevent violence happening again

  • The violence impacts many people, not only the survivor

  • There is no “one single approach offers justice to everyone” solution

  • State involvement (e.g. law enforcement, prison system) causes more net harm than benefit

  • Removing the person causing harm from the community is not always the best response

  • Punishment, including incarceration, is neither justice nor the impetus for change

Its primary goals include:

  • Survivor safety as highest priority

  • Accountability and transformation of person causing harm

  • Accountability and response of community

  • Change in community and social factors allowing violence to occur

Developing Your Own Community Response to Interpersonal Violence

Whether you’re part of a group of people who want to have a better way of responding to interpersonal violence happening in your community or a member of an organization wanting to explore a similar program, there are a lot of factors to consider to avoid causing new harm.

Integral skillsets for facilitating a successful accountability process include:

  • Domestic violence and/or sexual assault training

  • Trauma-informed peer counseling

  • Group facilitation experience

  • Community accountability/restorative justice process training (which is different from being a mediator or counselor)

Without these skillsets being brought to an accountability process by the people facilitating it, whether it’s an informal community space or a program within an organization, the likelihood of success is low. This can worsen safety risks and re-traumatize people who have already experienced harm.

Walnut Avenue and the CRC offer many trainings relevant to these basic skillsets. At this time, we do not offer circlekeeper training for other organizations because Space for Change is still in its pilot stage.

  • Visit the CRC’s website for more information about subjects related to mediation and restorative justice which don’t involve domestic violence

  • Visit our own education page for information about domestic violence and peer counseling trainings, all of which are offered at no cost

Many trainings are also offered by the resources listed below.

Interested in implementing a program like Space for Change with your community or organization?

Walnut Avenue and the CRC are happy to share their materials at no cost which your organization can adapt to its own needs. We especially recommend checking out the resources on our program page for more comprehensive and varied approaches to this work.