By Molly Leach

July 23, 2025

I recently read an Op-Ed written by the current Executive Director of a Community restorative justice program that I directed for a year during a volatile but positive transition time, working alongside courts, schools, LE, and the community as a whole--and one that was rapidly expanding due to the excellent work of the previous director. His Op-Ed celebrates and clarifies what RJ is with a clear eye on statistical evidence and illuminating its good principles and how they ideally should play out, in practice. I wondered, seven years now after my involvement in that program as its leader, have they changed how they operate on the inside?

When I got called to take over the program, it was jump-time into multiple counties as judges, DA's, police, and schools began to see the efficacy of our work offering a restorative process as an alternative to sentencing. Given this program is within the state of Colorado, it also legally was, and is, able to receive direct pre-file inquiries due to the stipulation (HB24-1101) that citizens have a right to restorative justice. Yet that stipulation put into law was only the beginning of much deeply needed work to build trust and alliances with all concerned. Having an RJ based law in place is a great first step--then the real work begins, of finding common values with justice officials and principals, of slowly building basic trust and avoiding trying to convince anyone that restorative justice is what they should be doing. We have to show them, and let them come to us, based in the time we take to demonstrate that we are all on the same team.

But the point of my post is that in all this key and critical work on "the outside"--meaning what we offer out to our communities--we are missing a big piece. What I experienced directly was a top-down delivery of power and politics that harmfully extricated me from a position I was dedicated to, without any form of restorative process--even as I asked the board for that process--not selfishly, but for all involved. I knew I was responsible, and so were others--the Board included. I knew I could have done some things differently and I knew that policies that reflected what we offered on the outside could have been game-changing, if we had them on the inside. Meaning, we were doing RJ for others but not for our internal systems. I'm not the only one who has experienced this. I've heard many stories over two decades of social justice organizations doing one thing on the outside and an entirely different one on the inside. The gap is frankly surprising yet not. And we need to do something about it--it's not that difficult.

Let me explain briefly.

What I experienced as that program's director was an insight, albeit a very difficult one, into how well-meaning non-profits doing restorative justice are actually doing harm to their own staff and perpetuating the lesser qualities of nonprofit work: high pressure, many hats worn, financial limits and lacks, rush culture, all the things that Tema Okun points out in her work (see our podcast "Transforming Systems Broken By Design", with her). When RJ organizations do not do RJ within, it is bound to fail at some point, and, perpetuate greater dysfunctions within the organization.

In writing this, I wish to emphasize that I am responsible along with those I worked with, and to date my inquiries for a restorative process were not replied to by the Board. Yet individuals--not all of them--were willing to have conversations of repair--and for me, wanting to repair and hear what I'd done unintentionally, to cause harm. I wanted to be responsible, and I also wanted responsibility and was curious why things became so harmful and destructive. Part of the reason was because the Board often functions as a rote activity of low responsibility and high status, as well as often a sense of disconnection from day to day work. There is also a prevalence of assumption across organizations as to what restorative justice is--as many board members as there are opinions about the matter. This is why a continuum of circles for connection and understanding are so important to any non-profit or any human system. Why we continue to gloss over and think that our old, tired, harmful policies work, is truly beyond me.

What I gained was an incredibly hurtful experience that clued me in on what to recommend to anyone doing any kind of work where two or more are gathered:

• We really need to consider individual and collective responsibility within a framework of restorative practices (-Kay Pranis) in order to frame how we move together
• We need conflict policy just like (or similar to) what we offer on the "outside"
• We need non-conflict practices on a weekly, or even daily, practice that keep us connected and to build trust
• We need to have ongoing community building circles with Board, Staff, Volunteers and interested potential facilitators to discuss the ever-evolving thing we call restorative.
• We need these systems/policies to be carefully heard and documented into policy not just by Board, but by voice-ins from all concerned.

What would you add?

*****

So when I read Op-Eds by people doing great work in this field, specific to an organization I'm pretty sure still hasn't fully learned its lesson from the harms it laid only on my shoulders, it stings but not like it used to at all--I know that some of us, not just myself, in this field, have experienced the severity of a values contradiction that is directly significant to one's professional and personal life--where one thing is said or offered, and yet the opposite is carried out.

My invitation to the Colorado program this concerns is, would you be willing also to learn from what happened? What can be done to support others in this field out of our mistakes? Is it ever too late for learning and to amend punitive internal policies? I wish my former colleagues all the best, and I still extend an invitation to the board to reconcile alongside and with me.