Schools and restorative justice

As the field of restorative justice began to define itself in the 1990s, the role of schools in promoting restorative justice was seen as central to developing a more restorative society as a whole:Even more crucial [than the work in juvenile and criminal justice] is the work just beginning in schools – anti-bullying systems, the prevention of truancy and exclusions, class circles, conflict resolution training, peer mediation. In schools we have society in miniature and persons in the process of learning to become citizens. It is not simply a milieu for jobtraining. How well we manage our schools will determine how well our society works a generation later (Marshall 1997: n.p.).