Restorative and Transformative Justice Resources

Bay Area Based Organizations

• All of Us or None     Committed to organizing formerly-incarcerated people to build a movement in Oakland, by working in coalition with other community groups and organizing campaigns, such as Ban the Box and Clean Slate. 
• Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC)     Community collective of individuals working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse. We envision a world where communities can intervene in incidences of child sexual abuse in ways that not only prevent future violence and harm, but actively cultivate healing, accountability and resiliency for all — survivors, bystanders, and those who have abused others. 
• Critical Resistance - Oakland Chapter     Seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. 
• Community United Against Violence (CUAV)     Founded in 1979, CUAV works to build the power of LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) communities to transform violence and oppression. We support the healing and leadership of those impacted by abuse and mobilize our broader communities to replace cycles of trauma with cycles of safety and liberation. As part of the larger social justice movement, CUAV works to create truly safe communities where everyone can thrive.
• Ella Baker Center     Offers smart solutions and uplifting alternatives to violence and incarceration. Books Not Bars organizes the largest network of families of incarcerated youth and champion alternatives to California’s costly, broken prison system. Heal the Streets trains Oakland youth to become community leaders and peace advocates.
• Insight Prison Project     For over fifteen years, Insight Prison Project has been on a mission to foster insight and lasting behavioral change by providing rehabilitative tools to prisoners in California correctional systems. IPP’s programs are conducted by crime victims, community volunteers and prisoners themselves – a rare and effective response to our statewide prison crisis and to the needs of prisoners, parolees, crime survivors, correctional staff and our California communities. 
• Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women     Founded by Rhodessa Jones to explore whether an arts-based approach could help reduce the numbers of women returning to jail.
• Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth     Founded in 2005, RJOY works to interrupt these cycles by promoting institutional shifts toward restorative approaches that actively engage families, communities, and systems to repair harm and prevent re-offending. RJOY focuses on reducing racial disparities and public costs associated with high rates of incarceration, suspension, and expulsion. We provide education, training, and technical assistance and collaboratively launch demonstration programs with our school, community, juvenile justice, and research partners.
• Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP)     The mission of the San Francisco Sheriffs Department's Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) is to bring together all those harmed by crime, including victims, communities, and offenders. RSVP is driven by victim restoration, offender accountability, and community involvement. 
• TGI Justice Project     Group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom. We work in collaboration with others to forge a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures.
• Youth Uprising     Envisions a healthy and economically robust East Oakland powered by the leadership of youth and young adults as well as improvements in systems and environments that impact them. Our primary focus is building a systems change and community economic development platform that supports and strengthens our personal transformation work.

National Organizations

• Black and Pink     An open family of LGBTQ prisoners and “free world” allies who support each other. Our work toward the abolition of the prison industrial complex is rooted in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people. 
• Critical Resistance     Seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. 
• Echoes of Incarceration      An award-winning documentary initiative produced by youth with incarcerated parents. The project explores the issue of mass incarceration and its effects on families, and creates documentary films told from the life experiences of the filmmakers themselves.
• Homeboy Industries     We help formerly gang involved and the recently incarcerated, by offering hope, training and job skills.
• INCITE Women of Color Against Violence     National activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and our communities through direct action, critical dialogue, and grassroots organizing.
• Philly Stands Up     We are a group dedicated to dealing with (sexual) consent, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and community accountability through transformative justice. We work nationally, but are rooted and dedicated to organizing in Philadelphia.
• TGI Justice Project     Group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom. We work in collaboration with others to forge a culture of resistance and resilience to strengthen us for the fight against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures.
• Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice    Promotes dialogue and networking within the restorative justice field and provides education and training through web-based and onsite programs.

Online Toolkits and Multimedia

• 360 Degrees     It is our hope that this site will challenge your perceptions about who is in prison today and why. We also hope that it will generate ideas, big and small, about how we can reduce crime and strengthen our communities without continuing this unprecedented rate of incarceration.
• Community Accountability Blog     A space to create an online collective knowledge base and resource center for community-based responses to gendered violence. Includes a special issue of Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order that critically examines grassroots efforts, cultural interventions, and theoretical questions regarding community-based strategies to address gendered violence. 
• Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence     An outgrowth of the Community-Based Interventions Project, a collaborative pilot project to create and promote new alternatives community-based models and educational tools for violence intervention and prevention. The Toolkit contains a basic model for violence intervention, useful information, worksheets, and stories based upon the experiences of Creative Interventions during its development and pilot stages.
• INCITE Community Accountability Resources     Presents community accountability as an alternative to policing and prisons
• Restorative Justice Online      Online clearinghouse of restorative justice resources. Includes a searchable database of more than 9,500 citations and abstracts for articles, books, technical documents, and other publications. 
• StoryTelling and Organizing Project (STOP)     Community project collecting and sharing stories about everyday people taking action to end interpersonal violence.
• Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance     Documents women's experiences in the criminal justice system through stories.  The stories are supported by a collection of resources, such as organizations, reports, essays, and links to a wide range of information on women and prison.

Articles

• Alternative Interventions to Violence: Creative Interventions by Mimi Kim
• Alternative Interventions to Intimate Violence:  Defining Political and Pragmatic Challenges by Mimi Kim
• Moving Beyond Critique: Creative Interventions and Reconstructions of Community Accountability by Mimi Kim
• Policing is a Dirty Job, But Nobody's Gotta Do It: 6 Ideas for a Cop-Free World by Jose Martin
• Toward Transformative Justice by Generation 5

Books

• Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology by INCITE Women of Color Against Violence Available to USF Library patrons
• Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza  Available to USF Library patrons
• The Little Book of Circle Processes: A New/Old Approach to Peacemaking by Kay Pranis  Available to USF Library patrons
• The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr  Available to USF Library patrons
• The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities: Repairing Harm and Rebuilding Trust in Response to Student Misconduct by David Karp  Available to USF Library patrons
• Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women by James Ptacek
• The Revolution Starts at Home : Confronting Intimate Violence within Activist Communities edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha  Available to USF Library patrons
• Stories of Transformative Justice by Ruth Morris  Available to USF Library patrons

Videos

• Concrete Steel and Paint      When men in a Pennsylvania state prison join with victims of crime to create a mural about healing, their views on punishment, remorse, and forgiveness collide. Finding consensus is not easy – but as the participants move through the creative process, mistrust gives way to surprising moments of human contact and common purpose.
• Hollow Water      Candid and touching documentary which takes us into the isolated Ojibway village of Hollow Water, located in Northern Manitoba. The community has had a history of violence, suicide, addiction problems and sexual abuse, but the residents of Hollow Water have taken healing into their own hands and launched a profoundly transformative process of restorative justice.
• The Interrupters     Tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed.  Available to USF Library patrons
• Long Night's Journey into Day     As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated the crimes of apartheid, the Commission brought together victims and perpetrators to relive South Africa's brutal history. By revealing the past instead of burying it, the TRC hoped to pave the way to a peaceful future.  Available to USF Library patrons
• Restorative Justice in School and Community Settings David Anderson Hooker provides an introduction to restorative justice, including its goals, pillars, principles, and practices.  Available to USF Library patrons
• Restorative Justice: Murder, Marriage, and a Mission When he was 18, Leonard Rubio killed his girlfriend. He spent almost 24 years in prison. Now, he and his wife, Aouie, who was there the day of the murder, are on a mission to transform the way we think about crime and justice. 
• A Sentence Apart      Follows three stories of people coping with a family member in prison, attempting to bridge broken relationships, and diligently working to reverse the generational cycle of incarceration. 
• Writ Writer     Portrays the historic conflict that emerged in the 1960s when Texas prisoners petitioned the courts for relief from inhumane prison conditions.

Have more resources to add? Please send your suggestions to the Education Librarian.