Restorative Justice Strategies to Provide Accountability to the Community

Crimes often affect not only the direct victims but also the victims’ families, friends, and even their communities. In last week’s Assignment, you examined restorative justice strategies to provide accountability and repair harm to the victim.

In this Assignment, you explore restorative justice strategies to provide accountability and repair harm to the community. This time you focus on Dante, rather than Jordan. To refresh your memory, see the case included below.

It is 4:38 p.m. on a cold January day in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Emma, a 34-year-old fifth-grade teacher, exits the elementary school where she works to a nearly empty parking lot.

As she approaches her car, she unlocks the doors with the key fob and places her laptop and purse in the back seat. She walks around to the driver’s side, opens the door, and gets in. Before she can close the door, two people approach her. One is a 15-year-old teenager named Dante, and the other is a 21-year-old adult named Jordan.

Dante yells, “Give me the keys or you’re dead.” Emma initially protests but then notices that Jordan has a gun. Jordan becomes impatient and hits Emma in the head with the gun. Dante and Jordan pull the disoriented and bleeding Emma out of the car and onto a nearby grassy area. Then they speed away in her car.

After news spreads of Emma’s carjacking, the surrounding community is shaken. Parents are fearful to send their children to the school and, in some cases, have made alternate arrangements. The school principal takes money originally earmarked for playground improvements and purchases a high-tech security system to monitor the parking lot.

Unfortunately, there is not enough money remaining to repair some of the gardens surrounding the parking lot, which were damaged when Jordan and Dante ran over them as they sped away in the car.

Dante finally appears before a judge, with his mother by his side, and pleads guilty. He expresses regret and remorse for the incident, and his mother vows to keep a closer eye on him. Dante has one prior conviction for second-degree assault after he attacked the owner of a convenience store last year.

He is also frequently absent from school and, when he does attend, regularly gets into physical fights with classmates. The judge offers Dante the opportunity to participate in a restorative justice program. Dante accepts.

Formulate a 750- to 1,000-word response to the case study that addresses the following questions:

Provide an argument for why a restorative justice approach would be appropriate given what you know about Dante, the crimes he committed, and the community in the case study.

How did the crimes described in the case study affect the community?

How would you incorporate family, friends, and the community into the restorative justice process? Identify specific restorative justice strategies you would use.

If you were the facilitator of a meeting between Dante and family, friends, and community members, how would you prepare for and guide the meeting? What would be the desired outcomes of the meeting and why? What issues or challenges might arise during the meeting?

If you were a member of the community, how would you hold Dante accountable for his actions?

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