The Long Road to System Transformation: Lessons from an RJ Practitioner in New York City

Erika Sasson is an attorney and practitioner who designs and facilitates restorative justice processes. Her work is focused on piloting restorative frameworks for complex harm, including for intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and homicide. She also consults on long-term projects with organizations in New York City and around the country who want to create restorative justice programming, or who need to navigate complex dynamics in pursuit of a healthier workplace. Erika’s work is anchored by her experiences learning directly from Native American peacemakers from across North America. Among her current projects, Erika is working with Violence Intervention Program—NYC’s only Latinx-led nonprofit focused on providing culturally-specific services to Latinx survivors of domestic and sexual violence—to create a localized restorative justice program tailored to the needs of their community. Erika is a 2023 recipient of The David Prize for extraordinary New Yorkers. Originally from Canada, Erika moved to NYC in 2009 and is raising a family with her husband Misha in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more or get in touch at erikasasson.com.

https://youtu.be/wU54dPA_NLs?feature=shared

Toward a Restorative Approach in Sport

Delivered by Jacob Glover on May 26, 2024 at 7:30 PM via Zoom.

Jacob Glover has a background in ancient philosophy, contemporary continental philosophy, and law. His interest in restorative justice took root in Prof. Jennifer Llewellyn’s seminars when he began thinking about the philosophical overlap between relational theory, restorative justice, ancient rhetoric, and network theory. Before returning to graduate school, he practiced corporate and property law. His graduate work focuses on taking a restorative approach to sport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSVCmi1d6o&ab_channel=RestorativeResearchInnovationandEducationLab

Reimagining Our Healthcare System: A Restorative Approach was a presentation and panel event hosted by First Nations Health Authority, Interior Health, and UBC Okanagan’s School of Nursing on October 5, 2022. The presentation by Professor Jennifer Llewellyn describes how a restorative approach to healthcare can transform systems and service delivery and create a shift in values and thinking, strengthening relationships between healthcare providers and the people and communities for whom they provide care.

COVID-19’s Disorienting Impact on
Criminal Justice in Nova Scotia

Delivered by Emma Halpern on April 17, 2023 at 7:30 PM via Zoom.
Emma Halpern is the inaugural Graduate Fellow at the Restorative Lab. Emma is a lawyer, activist and advocate who has worked extensively on behalf of vulnerable and marginalized people in Nova Scotia.  She is also the Executive Director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia an organization that is devoted to improving the lives of women, trans and non- binary people through comprehensive housing supports, innovative programming initiatives, advocacy, justice system reform and through fostering and developing personal empowerment. In 2022, Emma joined PATH Legal as the Legal Director. Prior to this role Emma was the Equity and Access Officer at the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society. She was also a consultant on the provincial government restorative approaches in schools initiative and has conducted extensive research and project development around building a restorative approach to working with children and youth.  In 2011, Emma was named one of Chatelaine Magazine’s Women of the Year in the category of “Everyday Hero” for her work on this project. Emma enjoys spending time with her three fantastic sons and is completing her LLM at Dalhousie Schulich School of Law focusing on the transformative opportunities born out of the pandemic’s impact on criminal justice in Nova Scotia. In particular, her research interests are in decarceration and relational justice.
Learn more about PATH Legal here: https://www.pathlegal.ca/
Learn more about Elizabeth Fry Society of Mainland Nova Scotia: https://www.efrymns.ca/

THE US CARCERAL STATE, GENDERED
VIOLENCE, AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Delivered on March 27, 2023 at 7pm at Dalhousie University in collaboration with the Criminal Justice Coalition of the Schulich School of Law. 

Donna Coker is Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law (Miami, Florida). She is a longtime advocate and researcher in the field of preventing and responding to intimate partner violence (IPV) and opposing racial and gender subordination in the criminal legal system. Donna began her career as a social worker in victim shelters and community-based programs. Her experiences assisting survivors convinced her that the increased reliance on the criminal legal system response to IPV that occurred in the 1980s-90s did not serve the needs of many survivors, particularly women of color and others most vulnerable to state control. Her interest in finding a different pathway led her to study the work of Navajo Peacemaking Courts. The empirical study that resulted has influenced work in the fields of restorative justice and IPV. Her more recent research has examined restorative responses to campus sexual assault and to building school-based support for girls of color. She served as an advisory board member for A National Portrait of Restorative Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence, a survey of U.S. programmes. She is the co-creator of a public education project, Reimagining the Movement to End Gender Violence, consisting of interviews with leading activists and scholars regarding the need to refocus anti-violence activism to addressing the structural inequalities that maintain violence.  In 2015, she was a co-investigator for Responses from the Field, a U.S. survey of service providers regarding their experiences with policing, domestic violence, and sexual assault. She served as an expert consultant and advisory board member for a project of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, Ending Mass Incarceration, Centralising Racial Justice, and Developing Alternatives. Donna holds an M.S.W. from the University of Arkansas and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Read more of Donna’s work: https://people.miami.edu/profile/c0a19acf3f21a417cea4b7679dc9914d

HEALING AND LEARNING AFTER HARM IN THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM: THE POTENTIAL OF A RESTORATIVE APPROACH

Delivered on March 13, 2022 by Allison Kooijman.

Ali is a PhD Student in the School of Nursing at UBC Okanagan where she studies the contributions that a Restorative Approach stands to make in the healthcare context. Ali experienced harm as a patient which ended her career as a Licensed Practical Nurse. This experience, both as a former healthcare provider and patient, provides her with a unique lens that she brings to this space. Ali believes that transformation and reimagining of our healthcare system requires a collaborative effort and identifying a principled approach to serve as a foundation for doing so. Ali lives on the lands of the Syilx peoples in beautiful Coldstream, British Columbia

Read more of Ali’s work: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Allison-Kooijman

Follow Ali on twitter: https://twitter.com/AllisonKooijma1

A Restorative Approach for Social and System Transformation by Prof. Jennifer Llewellyn

2024 Series

Toward a Restorative Approach in Sport

Delivered by Jacob Glover on May 26, 2024 at 7:30 PM via Zoom.

The Long Road to System Transformation: Lessons from an RJ Practitioner in New York City

Delivered by Erika Sasson on May 13, 2024 at 7:30 PM via Zoom. 

Delivered by Erika Sasson on May 13, 2024 at 7:30 PM via Zoom.

2023 Series

COVID-19’s Disorienting Impact on Criminal Justice in Nova Scotia​

Delivered by Emma Halpern on April 17, 2023 at 7:30 PM via Zoom.

THE US CARCERAL STATE, GENDERED VIOLENCE, AND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Delivered by Donna Coker on Monday, March 27, 2023.

Healing and Learning after Harm in the Healthcare System: The Potential of a Restorative Approach

Delivered by Allison Kooijman on Monday March 13, 2023.

 
 

2022 Series

Kindness Isn’t Weakness: Working together as a Restorative Community to Tackle Intractable Problems

Delivered by Dr. Holly Northam on Monday April 4, 2022.

Lighting A  Spark: Feminism, Emotions, and The Legal Imagination of Campus Sexual Violence

Delivered by Dr. Daniel Del Gobbo on Monday May 9, 2022.

A Restorative Approach to the Harm of Nonconsensual Pornography

Delivered by Dr. Alexa Dodge on Monday May 30, 2022.

Lighting a Spark: Feminism, Emotions, and the Legal Imagination of Campus Sexual Violence

Daniel Del Gobbo

Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, McGill University Faculty of Law

Fellow – Restorative Research, Innovation, & Education Lab 

Monday May 9th, 2022, at 6:30 pm Atlantic Time via Zoom

This talk will explore how feminist law and policymakers have been inspired by collectively generated experiences of emotion that help to shape what counts as justice and injustice in campus sexual violence cases. Focusing on events surrounding the Faculty of Dentistry at Dalhousie University in 2014-2015, I explain how emotional incitements in the case contributed to a political and discursive infrastructure that supported formal, adversarial, and punitive responses to campus sexual violence. Correspondingly, I explain why alternative modes of legal and political formation that challenged the premises of the formal law, including the restorative justice process employed in the case, were misread by some commentators as being a form of “weak justice” and therefore outside the bounds of feminist action. My claim is not that particular emotional reactions to campus sexual violence are right or wrong – they just are – but that feminist law and policymakers should critically reflect on and assess their political force. Considering the ways that emotions are mobilized reveals the benefits and drawbacks of engaging with the law in ways that feel emotionally gratifying and therefore legally and politically necessary, but which can lead to harmful consequences that contradict feminist goals.

A Restorative Approach to the Harm of Nonconsensual Pornography

Alexa Dodge

Hill Postdoctoral Fellow – Law, Justice, & Society Program, Dalhousie University

Associate – Restorative Research, Innovation, & Education Lab 

Monday May 30, 2022, at 6:30 pm Atlantic Time via Zoom

The nonconsensual distribution of nude or sexually explicit images (i.e. nonconsensual pornography) is increasingly recognized as a form of sexual violence that violates a victim’s right to privacy and bodily autonomy. High-profile cases of nonconsensual pornography from around the world have resulted in several international jurisdictions creating criminal and civil law responses to this act. As is often the case when governments are called upon to respond to harm, legal responses have been framed as amounting to taking the issue of nonconsensual pornography “seriously” and the creation of legal remedies have often overshadowed other options for response. While the framing of law as the most impactful remedy can result in the false belief that this issue has been adequately dealt with through legal regulation, in practice legal options do not serve the majority of those harmed and offer limited possibilities for prevention and culture change. In this presentation, I posit that the harm of nonconsensual pornography is often “rhizomatic” in nature and is, therefore, in need of a holistic, restorative response.