School is meant to be a safe space for students to build social and intellectual skills. At the same time, it can quickly turn into a violent landscape. Take Watsonville High School, where four teenagers were arrested on charges of attempted murder and felony battery. One of the teenagers, a 16-year-old boy, can be tried as an adult due to his age and felony charges per California Welfare and Institutions Code section 707(b).
The general consensus would be to place these students on suspension, but is societal isolation truly the right path to take? Whether as a supplement, preventative, or an alternative, restorative justice tackles harms and vulnerabilities that traditional punitive measures fail to remedy – and it needs to be implemented across California, starting with our children.
In recent years, there have been significant developments in juvenile justice reforms. In 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 823, which shut down the state’s juvenile detention centers by 2023. The last of incarcerated youth under the Department of Juvenile Justice were transferred to Secure Youth Transfer Facilities (SYTF) on June 30th, 2023. A secure youth transfer facility houses youth with severe crimes. In a facility, the youth will attend school and undergo rehabilitation. At that same time, the Department of Juvenile Justice ceased operations altogether, marking a transition towards more rehabilitative practices for incarcerated youth. Recent legislation in California has also opened up educational opportunities for incarcerated youth. In 2022, AB 102 made community college dual enrollment more accessible to those impacted by the juvenile system.
Nonetheless, the renovated juvenile justice system still battles with injustices, such as the dangerous conditions observed in SYTFs. In July of 2025, the Board of State and Community Corrections found that Los Angeles County’s Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall had unsuitable confinement conditions for juveniles. Through inspection, the facility had several Title 15 noncompliances, including safety checks, room confinement, and use of force.
Furthermore, SYTFs struggle to properly educate and accommodate incarcerated youth. For example, Megan Stanton-Trehan, former director of the Youth Justice Education Clinic at Loyola Law School, explained how an incarcerated student can be denied accommodations, express their agitation, and end up with labels of behavioral issues and removal from school. Moreover, she points out that confidentiality with incarcerated students’ academic data obscures any ability to properly assess whether juvenile justice systems are improving.
The Youth Law Center also found that between 2021 and 2022, California’s youth court schools had a dropout rate of 41.11 percent compared to 7.8 percent statewide. These court schools educate incarcerated youth in facilities run by county probation departments. Although progress has been made in recent years, questions remain about whether or not incarcerated youth receive proper educational and rehabilitative measures. This continual exclusion of system-impacted youth demands an assessment of the transition from juvenile detention centers to SYTFs. The state must disclose data about the academic success of incarcerated youth to remain accountable for ongoing reforms.
Restorative justice presents a solution to failures of traditional exclusionary discipline by aiming to prevent and remedy harm. Its philosophy also centers on healing harm and violence within a community. The City of Oakland has been a leading figure in implementing restorative justice practices in schools. Although efforts had been made since the early 2000s, a $2.5 million budget for a district-wide implementation was finally passed in 2017.
Today, Oakland Unified School District uses a three-tier model to define its program: 1) Community Building, meant to circulate discussion on behavioral disruption, 2) Restorative Processes, which address and remedy school incidents between the survivor and responsible person, and 3) Supported Re-Entry, the reintegration of a student from harsher punitive measures like incarceration or suspension. Together, these tiers work to build a strong community of students who learn to address their past harms and heal from violence.
Critics of restorative justice fear that the practice lets offenders off the hook and encourages them to reattempt their wrongdoings. There have been some instances where restorative justice is malpracticed. Dr. Julia Carlson, a school superintendent, observed in her research process that restorative justice is ineffective, and perhaps worse, when school staff are not fully committed to the program. Having witnessed ineffective restorative justice programs first-hand, she grieved “the idea that [her] son would sit in a circle with three boys who had tormented him for months… [with] no one there to sit beside him and support him.”
Indeed, Fania E. Davis, a leading voice and figure in restorative justice, asserts that there must be a “mindful, rigorous approach to implementation” of well-trained individuals and infrastructures for prosperous restorative justice programs. When restorative justice is properly implemented, the results are astounding. A study from the University of Chicago’s Education Lab found that schools with restorative practices experienced a 35 percent decrease in student arrests at school and a 15 percent decrease in out-of-school student arrests. Additionally, the Learning Policy Institute found that students exposed to restorative justice practices reported improved academic performance, reduced suspension rates, and improved behavior and school safety.
Today, many school districts have shifted to implementing restorative justice in their systems. However, districts may still be reluctant to fully commit to the practice in the case of more severe offenses. One study found that a school in California had implemented restorative justice but still retained exclusionary policies. For example, the school maintained an accountability infraction system that led to automatic detentions and eventual suspension.
While saving harsher punitive measures for severe infractions may seem logical, it renders the implementation of restorative justice ineffective. Restorative justice practitioner Sujatha Baliga recounts facilitating a restorative circle for a sexual assault incident between 18-year-old Michael and 15-year-old Sofia. She emphasized that there were many procedures that needed to be cleared before conducting a circle talk, such as ensuring with the district attorney and school district that nothing the students said would be used against them in the disciplinary processes. Because threats of legal or disciplinary action were subdued, Michael was able to openly express to Sofia why he had assaulted her, and Sofia was able to express her grievances and pains.
In the end, Sofia was reported to have more self-confidence, and Michael sent Baliga his research paper on sexual violence. This story highlights the benefits restorative justice produces, especially when a strict and involved process is implemented. Following the steps of Oakland Unified School District’s three-tier model, Michael and Sofia addressed and resolved a serious incident, and ultimately bloomed into stronger individuals.
Restorative justice not only uplifts perpetrators of harm, but also survivors of harm. However, for the practice to be fully effective in schools, it must be done with full commitment and intention. The aforementioned study affirms that including restorative justice policies in school documents would ensure that changes are institutionalized.
I recently had the opportunity to listen in on a talk by David Yusem, who has been the Restorative Justice Coordinator at Oakland Unified School District for 15 years. When asked about his experiences implementing restorative justice in schools, he responded that it “takes time… it takes years. It’s a slow roll towards that.” At first, “making a revolutionary change like this can be confusing, [and] it looks like opposite things are happening. Restorative justice will exist alongside a punitive model of discipline, but eventually results show, and they are incredibly inspiring.” Yusem adds, “Forgiveness is never the goal [of restorative justice], but it is often a byproduct of that process.”
I hope that the opportunity to experience restorative justice is extended to the 16-year-old boy from Watsonville High School and his survivors. Violence often breeds from prior harms, and victims of violence deserve a chance to break that cycle. Rather than the tumultuous and endless tunnel of trauma through the prison system, restorative justice is a beaming beacon of justice, opening a gate towards understanding, community, and healing.
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