To understand best practices and challenges associated with developing and implementing restorative justice diversion (RJD), Assistant Professor Sukhmani Singh, in partnership with Impact Justice, is a sub-awardee of a Bureau of Justice Category 2 Award. Over the course of this project, Dr. Singh and team are seeking to understand the training and technical assistance experiences of what it means to deliver Restorative Justice Diversion programming. Lessons learned from this collaborative study will be translated into an innovative technical and training assistance curriculum by the Restorative Justice Project team, Impact Justice. Dr. Singh is leading the research efforts of the process evaluation.
“Restorative Justice Diversion programming — deep engagement in practices that offer healing and repair to the very human experience of committing and receiving harm — has resurged in the United States particularly as states contend with what it means to develop, implement, and maintain community-based solutions to advancing care and justice,” says Singh. “The purpose of this project is to engage in dialogue with community-based organizations and their juvenile legal system counterparts — across 10 different jurisdictions in the country — in understanding lessons learned from having received training and technical assistance in working through the praxis of restorative justice diversion programming over the last decade. Lessons learned will inform the development and process evaluation of an innovative, cohort-based training and technical assistance model to new sites interested in exploring pre-prosecution restorative justice diversion for youth.”
Read more about Singh's research.
Read about her presentation at the Connecticut Sentencing Commission Meeting.