Making it Right: Restorative Justice for Youth

Restorative Justice offers a novel approach to dealing with criminals. Both offenders and victims become integral to the process with offenders encouraged to take responsibility for their actions — apologizing to victims, repaying stolen money and performing community service — in lieu of jail time. 

Locally, social worker and mediator Linda Harvey and former Kentucky State Trooper Diana Queen have a pursued a vision for restorative justice in Kentucky. Harvey leads Juvenile Restorative Justice in Lexington, a program that works with juveniles who commit public offenses or who are considered beyond the control of their families or schools. Queen is the Executive Director of the Restorative Justice Center of Kentucky and is engaged in bringing restorative justice practices to schools, courts and the community.

On this segment of Spotlight on Youth, Harvey and Queen will talk about their work and what more can be done to expand the use of restorative justice in the juvenile justice arena and possibly shift the paradigm of our deeply embedded adversarial system of  justice for the benefit of both offenders and the community.