Fatimeh Khan is the AFSC California Healing Justice Program Co-Director. While AFSC works to reduce the prison population and limit police authority and militarization, we also promote healing and restorative practices as alternatives to violence and punishment. Through education and policy, we work to create pathways of healing that are viable alternatives to the current punishment/violence-based systems. We offer webinars, develop curricula, and advocate for community-based programs.
What’s the context for AFSC’s work on Restorative Justice?
It’s important to understand the context of Restorative Justice (RJ) work in California. In 2011, the California Supreme Court ordered the state to reduce its prison population. At that time, California was triple-bunking people in prison.
It’s clear we needed a different path, but it’s challenging politically because prisons are money-making machines. When you put someone in prison, you remove them from their community. The person who survives the crime isn’t getting any healing from the person who harmed them. Instead, we’re perpetuating hurting different people in different ways.
Many times, we think of people who cause harm in one dimension. The system calls them “an offender.” But we don’t consider all that’s happened in their lives that’s gotten them to this point. What are all the factors in our society that contribute to their harm?
In the last 10 years, RJ has come a long way in addressing the problems of mass incarceration. At first, people then didn’t understand what it would accomplish; they did not understand the RJ process. To the inexperienced person, the RJ process looks like a get “off easy” alternative to the systems tough on crime approach.
It took a long time for people to understand that RJ is not a new idea. RJ principles and practices come from indigenous practices of dealing with harm.
Now people are actively seeking alternatives to the status quo because it’s a broken system. We want to be able to address harm in the community while also supporting the people who are harmed. We want alternatives to incarceration and to change our justice system. This is where RJ is coming to the forefront.
RJ is very human-centered – and we now have enough data to show it is evidence based. As RJ practitioners, what we use to measure RJ’s effectiveness is very different from how DAs or “systems people” measure things. When they talk about RJ, they have a very narrow view. But RJ is a very large umbrella.
AFSC sees restorative justice as a means to address harm in a way that does not seek incarceration. That’s our lane. But the topic of RJ is so much bigger.
More and more people are drawn to it and working on it in different facets. Some use restorative circles to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Others use it to disrupt the prison industrial complex. More interestingly, some others are using RJ proactively, trying to get people to live in a restorative way so that when harm occurs, we know how to deal with it.
We also have Victim Offender Dialogues (VODs) happening in prisons in which the person incarcerated talks with the people who experienced the harm. This is after adjudication and imprisonment.
What’s happened in the legislature regarding RJ?
Two years ago, AFSC and partners worked on AB 60, a law that requires that victims be notified of their option to access restorative programs in their vicinity. But there aren’t RJ programs everywhere.
Still, telling people they have an RJ option is pretty big. Hopefully AB 60 will prompt people to learn about RJ. Indirectly, we hope the bill will help us see who’s asking for RJ services in counties that don’t offer them. That could be helpful data for the work to come.
AFSC and partners are working with the California Attorney General and training district attorneys. The AG is supposed to create a victim services card that tells people about their options and services. RJ will be added to that card, and we’ve been working with the AG on how to roll that out.
We’ve also been working with district attorneys and the prosecutors’ alliance all over the state. We’ve been holding AB 60 presentations. It’s been good, though it’s nerve-wracking to work with systems partners. Their values are different from ours.
For example, we use people-centered language such as “person harmed” and “person responsible” - and they don’t. They use “offender” and “victim” – but so often offenders have been victims of violent crime themselves.
We’re always trying to protect the efficacy of restorative practices.
What does community-based RJ look like?
RJ work should be done in consultation with the people it serves. There are folks in our coalition who do RJ work – such as direct service in circles. One group works on domestic violence and sexual assault cases, but they don’t work with police or DAs. Any circle processes they do are completely outside the legal system. That’s what we call community-based RJ.
There are groups who get cases referred to them from the DA - these are diversion programs. Both of these kinds of groups are doing RJ work, but they’re serving different populations, and their needs are different. It’s vital we tailor the process to the needs of the people being served.
Last year, we worked on a bill that was making its way through the legislature until we hit an amendment that changed the essence of it. We then pulled the bill. It had to do with protecting dialogue in RJ circles, so that no court could subpoena dialogue from an RJ circle – before, during, or after the circle.
That’s important because we’re trying to protect the RJ process. If we don’t, we’ll see RJ coopted by the system into something we don’t want.
What else does AFSC do to promote RJ?
AFSC doesn’t do direct service work - we don’t have that capacity. I wear the hat of training and presenting and advocacy. We help implement RJ.
Last fall, I did an RJ cohort with about 50 people from across the country. Some people contacted me about bringing circle process to the Berkeley Friends Meeting. I started with two people, and we created a structure for how to bring it in. We had posted these earlier trainings on our website:
RJ Community Conversation about Accountability and Healing
In November, we screened a film on RJ which followed a practitioner in Oakland. All this lent a hand to the Friends Meeting’s upcoming circle. It was interesting watching them watch someone embody RJ instead of just hearing about it.
What are some of the indigenous roots of RJ?
RJ is a term we’ve coined. The practices have indigenous roots in this land, in Canada, in New Zealand, and across the Pacific. We sit in circle – that’s how we communicate and address things.
It’s interesting how people-centered it is. RJ looks at what harms were caused. What people do we need to get in space together to address the harm? What actions need to happen to mitigate the harm? It’s very simple. We live in a hyper-individualistic, capitalistic society. RJ takes people who don’t know each other and puts them in mediated conversations with lots of preparation.
RJ or circle process is not just for dealing with harms or bad things. Using circles from an indigenous standpoint can be for welcoming, celebrations, or grieving. There are a lot of different ways to utilize circles.
We’re utilizing this indigenous tool to address harm. We’re putting human-centered tools to the forefront of addressing harm and crime - differently than prisons and other systems that dehumanize people.
Motivations for this work
My answer for why I do this work has changed over the years. Given where I and the world are right now, RJ work is so important because we need real solutions. We need solutions that center community and human connectedness.