Restorative Stories
Transformative Healing for Survivors of Youth Crime, Condemned Children, and their Families*
Transformative Healing for Survivors of Youth Crime, Condemned Children, and their Families*
These are the stories of those impacted by youth violence and the extreme sentencing of youth who have found healing through restorative justice. Survivors. Families. Communities. Condemned children.
Their testimonies can serve as a beacon of hope for understanding ways to address harm that recognize the potential and promise that exists in every child.
“I wasn’t born someone that was going to commit a homicide, so how did I get here? Where was the first domino, and how did I go wrong? Because if I could understand that, I could prevent that person from manifesting again.” – Tim Deal
These testimonies feature experiences of survivors of youth crime and their families, members of the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network (ICAN), and the loved ones of people given extreme sentences as children.
A common thread among these individuals is their embrace of restorative justice. Each of them has been drawn to this model in some form, as a place to resolve conflict, repair harm, and find healing. It is through sharing their experiences with restorative justice that we hope to elevate and explore this model as a key component in our vision for transformative healing justice.
This story bank is a powerful reservoir of lived experiences detailing ways to address harmful and destructive behaviors that bring healing and restoration. Ways that should be instructive especially when the person who caused the harm is a child.
We can be guided by these stories of young people once judged and treated as irredeemable who have embraced the responsibility of helping others to redeem themselves.
Their stories can help us acknowledge the cruelty and wasted human potential when harm is addressed solely with handcuffs, cages, and condemnation.
Their stories can inspire us to imagine something different.
Through the redemptive power of these stories, we can find our own agency to redeem society into one that treats every child as a child because no child is born bad.
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