Restorative Practice Works

The Harvest Collegiate Circle Keepers present a powerful model of youth-led restorative justice that transforms how conflicts are addressed in schools, moving from punitive measures toward healing and community building. These high school students from New York City demonstrate through their practice how restorative justice works as an alternative to the school-to-prison pipeline, addressing conflicts ranging from simple classroom disruptions to complex issues involving white supremacy, racism, sexism, and homophobia.

"The main reason why us as circle keepers do this work is just because we have a love for our community and a love for building our community and helping out other people... we're doing all this work so that we can see it in our school and see it in other schools and working so that everyone has the opportunity to have this in their school."

"Everyone is on the same level they have the same authority they have the same power everyone's voice is heard whereas with the vertical it's only you hear one person's voice and everyone has to agree with it whereas horizontal it's like everyone is on equal terms and everyone has a say."

"It takes a strong individual who can easily connect with people and make conversation with anyone. The qualities a strong restorative justice leader has are creativity, awareness and knowledge and understanding and of course a sense of humor."

• How do the Harvest students distinguish between restorative and punitive justice? What are the implications of having "room to redeem yourself" versus traditional punishment?
• The students emphasize that their work strengthens the entire school community. What evidence do you see of this broader impact?
• These students dedicate significant additional time and emotional energy to this work. What motivates them, and what does this suggest about youth capacity for leadership in justice work?