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[quote=Anonymous]Restorative justice can be valuable if done well. My experience with a restorative circle in a school setting was not a good one. My 7th grade niece was being verbally and physically bullied by a key ringleader who had pretty much scared the entire class into not talking to my niece. Even my niece's friends were afraid to hang out with her as the bully would then bully them too. The ringleader had 3 or 4 key sidekicks who would make up rumours about my niece to give the bully a reason to be nasty to her and to keep others away from her.

The school did a restorative circle with my niece, the bully and her 4 sidekicks. In the circle, the bully and 5 sidekicks said my niece was the bully and made up multiple fake examples of my niece bullying them. The side kicks cried about how much my niece hurt them. My niece said basically nothing as she was terrified of them all. The person leading the restorative circle basically told them all to stop bullying and to be nice to each other and that it was a shared blame and misunderstanding issue. They all had to agree to be nice to each other going forward. They left the restorative circle and basically bullied her immediately.

My niece changed schools the next year but that restorative circle did far more harm than good. [/quote]

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