Restorative justice offers a vision for transforming the criminal legal system from punishment to healing, accountability, and repair. Instead of asking what law was broken and how to punish, restorative approaches seek to address the needs of the harmed party and hold the responsible party accountable, as well as providing them with a pathway to potentially make amends for their actions.
This episode looks at how restorative justice practices can be expanded so that restorative responses become a core part of criminal legal system reform rather than a peripheral alternative.
Our guest is Patrick Stephens, a formerly incarcerated person and restorative justice practitioner. He is an Advisory Council member for the Children’s Defense Fund-NY and adjunct member of the NYC Bar Association’s Mass Incarceration Task Force where he sits on its Corrections and Community Reentry Committee. He also currently serves as Leadership Fellow at the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA).
