Dalai Lama Center: What are some of the common misconceptions about Restorative Justice?

Dr. Brenda Morrison: The two most common misconceptions are, one, that restorative justice is the soft approach to harmful behavior in schools and, two, restorative justice should not be used for serious incidents of harmful behavior where there are power imbalances, such as bullying behavior.

DLC: It seems that people from all strata of life -- the media, academia, even the entertainment field -- are acknowledging that bullying is not merely a fact of life, but something truly harmful to society. How will we know if all the anti-bullying speech and campaigning is succeeding?

BM: Yes, we need to follow up with people to see if our interventions and initiatives are working. Good intentions are not enough. Indeed, meta analyses of a number of intervention programs show marginal results in addressing bullying and victimization in schools. I will be talking about this in my talk and proposing a framework to re-evaluate the problem of the harmful effects of bullying in school.  

DLC: If your audience takes home only one thing from your talk, what do you hope that will be?

BM: Through the wisdom of compassion and the courage to stand up we can create communities of care in our schools, and move beyond the ongoing problems of passive bystanders and not addressing the deeper issues underlying bullying behaviour. We need to nurture communities where everyone feels valuable, powerful and needed.

Read the whole interview here. 

Buy your tickets now for the Power Dynamics of Bullying: A Restorative Justice Approach.

Explore an approach to help people move from retribution to compassion, from fear to hope. Conflict is a normal part of life. It can either shut us down or it can provide an opportunity to better understand each other.

Dr. Brenda Morrison is a Co-Director of the Centre for Restorative Justice and an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University.