IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17700.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

From Retributive to Restorative: An Alternative Approach to Justice in Schools

Author

Listed:
  • Adukia, Anjali

    (University of Chicago)

  • Feigenberg, Benjamin

    (University of Illinois at Chicago)

  • Momeni, Fatemeh

    (University of Chicago)

Abstract

School districts historically approached conflict-resolution from the perspective that suspending disruptive students was necessary to protect their classmates, even if this caused harm to perceived offenders. Restorative practices (RP) – focused on reparation, accountability, and shared ownership of disciplinary justice – are designed to address undesirable behavior without harming students. We study Chicago Public Schools' adoption of RP and find that suspensions and arrests decreased, driven by effects for Black students. We find null effects on test-score value added, ruling out meaningful average declines. We estimate a 15% decrease in out-of-school arrests, consistent with RP substantively changing student behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Adukia, Anjali & Feigenberg, Benjamin & Momeni, Fatemeh, 2025. "From Retributive to Restorative: An Alternative Approach to Justice in Schools," IZA Discussion Papers 17700, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17700
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17700.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    restorative practices; school discipline; human capital; restorative justice; behavior; classroom management;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17700. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.