Anyone age 18 or younger accused of violating Illinois law, who has formal charges filed against them, has historically had their case tried in a courtroom but some judges are choosing another option in hopes of keeping young people out of the system.

Courts in Avondale, Englewood, North Lawndale and Sauk Village in Cook County use restorative justice for nonviolent felony or misdemeanor cases for people ages 18-26. They attend court-appointed conferences or "peace circles" with family, friends and community members to encourage accountability.

Elizabeth Clarke, founder and executive director of the Illinois Juvenile Justice Initiative, thinks the restorative justice model should be expanded.

"Cook County should be using it, not just in low-level cases, but in really serious felony cases," Clarke contended.

Victims and survivors of crimes may volunteer to participate in the conferences. This Friday, the Juvenile Justice Initiative will host two restorative justice practitioners with the Youth Justice Agency in Belfast, Northern Ireland, speaking at the Adler Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice in Chicago.

The Cook County Circuit Court website said a "Repair of Harm Agreement" lists what a young offender must complete, from performing community service and writing a reflection letter, to attaining a high school equivalency diploma and finishing a substance abuse program.

Joshua Brooks restorative justice hubs coordinator for the Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice at Adler University, said restorative justice is a practice; a way of life borrowed from Indigenous beliefs.

"It's really based on the principle that we belong to each other, and we need to do right by each other," Brooks explained. "There are just several different principles and values that include relationship building, confidentiality, repairing harm, community building, shared power. And the way that it's practiced is usually through circles."

Brooks argued strengthening relationships with community members and bringing them into a place where they can trust one another is also important. If the young person completes the items on their list, criminal charges are dismissed and the case is expunged.

Chicago Appleseed for Fair Courts data show between 2020 and 2023, 100 people completed a restorative justice program. By March 2023, 94% had their charges dropped or dismissed.

By Ricky Rodas for Yes! Magazine.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Yes! Magazine-Public News Service Collaboration

When Cecilia Gonzalez told family members she had volunteered to share her life story with men in prison, they were shocked.

Gonzalez, 56, had spent most of her adult life recovering from the pain and trauma of childhood abuse and domestic violence. She has a loving family and a stable marriage of 25 years. Her family couldn’t understand why she would want to talk to the kind of person she’d spent her life trying to escape.

But for Gonzalez, sharing her story was a way to bring her healing journey full circle. After years of perseverance, she’d established herself as a community services manager for House of Ruth, a nonprofit organization based in Pomona, California. Every day, she helps survivors wrestle with similar challenges to the ones she’s faced. 

When she received an invitation to speak at the California Institution for Men, a prison in the city of Chino, California, in August, she saw a new opportunity to help interrupt the cycle of domestic and sexual violence: talking directly with people who have caused harm.

“I know that change is possible,” Gonzalez says. “It’s good when somebody is able to tell you that a life without violence and any type of abuse in the home is possible.”

The panel was organized by a program called the Victim Offender Education Group. Founded by Insight Prison Project, the program provides rehabilitation activities for men at the California Institution for Men. The curriculum is grounded in principles of restorative justice, commonly defined as an alternative to punitive justice that promotes healing for the person who was harmed, the person who carried out the harm, and the communities they both belong to.

Although the group was not created specifically for people involved in domestic violence and intimate partner violence, it has increasingly focused on serving this population as it became clear that many program participants had committed these types of crimes, said Rev. Nora Jacob, a minister at Covina Community Church and program lead in restorative justice at the prison.

Jacob has been organizing education groups in prison settings since 2014 and has facilitated the rehabilitation of several cohorts of men who have committed a variety of crimes, including domestic violence and intimate partner violence. A two-hour session is held once per week and consists of a mix of readings and empathy-building exercises. Participants spend time sharing and self-reflecting on the decisions and circumstances that led to their incarceration.

“People come out changed,” Jacob says. At the introductory meeting, she tells participants: “We are asking you to share as much as you’re willing to share, and we are going to ask about everything.”

Reconciling with hurt is something that Jacob has had to do in her own life. As a child growing up in upstate New York, she was sexually abused. “What I’d been told about God—that a creator was real, that God had not seen or heard me when I cried out” she could no longer believe, she says. “So I rejected any kind of organized religion for a long time.”

Decades passed, and Jacob found herself married and living in Orange County, California. She then faced a crisis when her husband of 19 years suddenly passed away from a brain aneurysm. “One night I was contemplating suicide and called out to God—I didn’t believe in God—and had a feeling of the Holy Spirit coming over and reassuring me.”

Jacob, a library services director at the time, joined the Disciples of Christ denomination church in her county. She eventually enrolled in Claremont School of Theology where she spent time with social justice activists. After graduating, Jacob trained at Insight Prison Project in the Bay Area to be a restorative justice facilitator and eventually secured her current position at the California Institution for Men.

“I’m committed to restorative justice,” Jacob says. “I live differently because of restorative justice, and anything that can do that [kind of transformation] for a person I think is worth the pursuit.”

Restorative justice started gaining momentum among grassroots organizations in the 1970s, but it is not a new practice, as its roots are in Indigenous customs, such as talking circles. Restorative justice has grown in popularity for its potential to reduce recidivism, which is the likelihood that a previously incarcerated person will re-offend for the same crime. That’s what Jacob has seen among the men her program works with. Incarcerated individuals who take part in rehabilitative programs are less likely to reoffend than their counterparts who don’t, according to data compiled by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The Costs of Violence

Domestic violence refers to any type of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse inflicted on a person by their partner, family member, or cohabitant. Intimate partner violence is similar, but refers specifically to violence from a partner, spouse, or ex-partner. These crimes don’t just affect the victims and their families; they also have huge financial implications for society at large.

Intimate partner violence against women costs California $73.7 billion in health care, lost earnings, criminal justice expenses, and survivor support, which accounted for 2% of California’s gross domestic product in 2022 alone, according to a joint study by UC San Diego and Tulane University. The study, which primarily uses data compiled from the California Violence Experiences Survey, measures both the tangible and intangible costs of intimate partner violence. The study also draws on data from other sources, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the state budget, health care providers, the Centers for Disease Control, and many others.

Jakana Thomas, PhD, an associate professor at UC San Diego and principal investigator for the survey, said that while the price tag might be high, it only represents a fraction of these crimes’ negative impacts because of gaps in data collection. 

Thomas gave some examples, such as lack of data quantifying the amount of time police spend investigating intimate partner violence, or more specific data regarding health care costs and the impact on survivors’ quality of life. “ This is not just costing taxpayers,” Thomas says. “It costs the people who have to deal with that violence quite dearly, both financially and in intangible ways.”

Breaking Cycles of Abuse

For the panel event, Gonzalez and other nonprofit advocates were paired with an education group member and filled the role of a surrogate survivor, someone who could tell their member how it felt to be the victim of domestic or intimate partner violence. The exercise represented the culmination of the members’ education and was meant to gauge whether each man could feel empathy for their surrogate survivor and remorse for the immense hurt they had caused others.

For the surrogate survivors, sharing their stories is potentially a cathartic experience, said Melissa Pitts, the chief program officer for House of Ruth, who also served on the panel. That’s because many survivors have never had the opportunity to address the people who caused them harm.

That’s what convinced Gonzalez to participate in the panel. She said she was initially skeptical of the idea. “Then I thought about it and [realized] I’ve never been able to face any of my attackers and let someone know exactly how I felt,” Gonzalez says.

Pitts said that organizations like House of Ruth are increasingly interested in restorative justice practices, while remaining survivor centered. One motivation, she said, is that domestic violence is widespread, but carceral solutions typically don’t get to the root of the problem. For example, many people who cause harm are replicating abusive patterns they learned in childhood, she explained.

The need is widespread. “If you go to the prison system, a corrections officer will tell you 90% of their caseload has experienced domestic violence growing up in the home,” Pitts says. “And then you can go to an affluent community with lots of monetary resources, and they are experiencing domestic violence.”

One former education group participant at the California Institution for Men, who requested anonymity because of safety concerns, believes the harm he committed stems back to his traumatic adolescence. The participant was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for a domestic-violence-related murder.

The man said he grew up in a household where violence was commonplace. Years of neglect and abuse carried out by his father, mother, and other adults in his life pushed him toward drugs and gangs, he said. The violence also distorted how he viewed relationships. “The way that my mom, father, and stepfather talked about women led me to believe that you couldn’t trust women, and I carried that into my relationships,” he says.

Once incarcerated at the California Institution for Men, the man began to meet other people in rehabilitation classes who had faced similar struggles. After connecting with Jacob and other advocates affiliated with the Victim Offender Education Group, he decided to apply. He spent the next few years in group restorative justice circles unpacking his pain and learning to accept responsibility for the violence he inflicted upon women and others.

The man said his life-changing moment came when, after years of therapy and reflection, he took part in a surrogate survivor panel. “Hearing the raw emotions coming out of someone that had been a victim of a similar crime, it stirred up something in me which I had never felt, which was empathy,” he says. “I really started to realize the harm that I caused. Before, I always felt that no one cared about me, so why should I care about anybody?”

The participant was paroled over a year ago and is now involved in restorative justice advocacy, speaking to youth in juvenile hall. He also visits the California Institution of Men to share his story with those who are incarcerated. For him, being able to feel guilt and remorse for his past actions has been the key to genuinely turning his life around.

“For me, genuine change is remorse,” he says. “It changes who you are, so you don’t … continue to harm people.”

For Gonzalez, participating in the panel didn’t go as well as she’d hoped. She said she left the event feeling like the incarcerated person she’d spoken with had more work to do, a sentiment she shared with Jacob afterward.

“The reaction I got from this individual wasn’t what I was expecting, so I walked out of there feeling a little confused,” she says. “I thought I was going to see the remorse. My expectation was to see something visual.”

Instead, the man didn’t say much and, according to her, didn’t appear to show empathy. Still, Gonzalez said she believes in the program’s mission and thinks the person she talked to can benefit from it.

“Even with the harm he’s caused, I feel he deserves to have somebody continue to teach him, whatever needs to be done for him to come to terms with how he has caused harm,” Gonzalez says.

She also walked away feeling proud of the progress she’d made to date.

“The biggest thing I took [away] is that change is so powerful,” she says. “Even as a victim, it’s possible to become 100% a survivor and have full control.”


Ricky Rodas wrote this article for Yes! Magazine.


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April is National Second Chance Month but across the Commonwealth, resources to help people leaving prison find gainful employment are dwindling.

According to data from the Prison Policy Initiative, of more than 50,000 people in 2010, 33% found no employment in the four years following release.

The Louisville Office of the Center for Employment Opportunities is the region's largest reentry services program.

Ray Mansfield, site director at the center, said those who have paid their debts to society often do a lot of internal work to rehabilitate but opportunities to change their lives and project growth outward are limited.

"What we're seeing in our area is a stigma placed on those individuals that said that they can't change," Mansfield observed. "They're being subjugated to either the most labor-intensive or the lowest-paying jobs."

Kentucky releases around 225,000 men and 86,000 women from behind bars each year. Nationwide, more than 500,000 people are released from state and federal prison each year.

Mansfield argued Kentucky should allocate dedicated funding toward entry-level, on-the-job learning programs, noting the benefits to communities, families and the local economy. He pointed to the commercial driver's license as an example of a certification to job pipeline.

"Putting money towards a reentry work or job program that would allow reentering individuals who obtain their CDL licenses to work with an organization or a company, that gives them a start," Mansfield explained.

He noted nationwide, there is an immense disparity between the amount of funds dedicated to incarceration, including building new prisons, and the investments made toward reentry services.

"However, even they are struggling to identify and secure the funding that is truly needed to provide the services to the populations that we're hoping to impact," Mansfield emphasized.

Without housing, it is difficult for individuals to obtain employment. According to federal data, at least one-quarter of returning individuals leave jails and prisons without a stable living situation. Most rely on family or friends. Even when returning individuals can find affordable housing, landlords are often unwilling to rent to them.


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For thousands of Mississippians leaving prison each year, a single question looms large: Who will hire me?

State lawmakers could remove some of the biggest barriers to answering that question by expanding the Fresh Start Act. Backers say it could change lives and save taxpayers millions. The bill would dramatically widen a 2019 law that helps people with criminal records obtain professional licenses. If passed, barbers, electricians and dozens of other professionals would no longer be automatically disqualified from licensing because of unrelated past convictions.

Will Ervin, senior vice president of Empower Mississippi, is advocating for its passage.

"By reforming the licensing process to ensure that past convictions unrelated to a profession don't serve as an automatic disqualification," he said, "we believe the bill promotes economic opportunity while also maintaining necessary safeguards."

The 2019 law covered only eight licenses. Senate Bill 2248 would expand it to more than 40. And it excludes fields such as law enforcement. It cleared the state Senate unanimously. Some House members have voiced concerns about impacts on medical licensing compacts.

Mississippi faces a persistent recidivism problem, with 40% of people who are released returning to prison within three years. Ervin pointed to stable employment and housing as the most important factors needed to lower that rate.

"If we can address those things, I think we can have a really big impact on recidivism in the state," he said. "We've seen great reception from lawmakers to combating recidivism. I think they recognize that this is a public safety issue."

The debate comes as Mississippi spends nearly $500 million annually on corrections, with one of the nation's highest incarceration rates. Proponents say helping more people find work upon their release could ease this burden and strengthen the state's workforce.


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