Sustained Restorative Dialogue to Understand and Address Structural Sources of Harm in University Communities

When restorative justice was translated from the criminal justice context to schools and universities, there was an increased focus on proactively building positive relational ecologies in addition to responding restoratively to incidents of harm. Still, restorative justice often falls short of providing a method for addressing structural and institutional inequities that cause harm within communities. The Sustained Restorative Dialogue process was designed and first piloted at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand as a restorative approach to understanding and addressing those broader structural sources of harm. The first iteration was focused on understanding and addressing the prevalence of sexual harm. The process was later piloted at Roberts Wesleyan University to address issues involving multicultural inequity. The design of the Sustained Restorative Dialogue will be discussed as well as the outcomes of both pilots, including examples of speech data from participants of the dialogues, and resulting institutional changes.