By Ellie Gosling
As the country reflects on the historic events of the past year, questions of how to move forward and make positive change have been percolating in the minds of PiRI staff, board, volunteers, and clients. One of the main topics of discussion is what role, if any, do restorative practices play into efforts to reform or reimagine policing? It is important to continue this discussion, and this article by no means exhausts the conversation, but it will provide a few different perspectives to approach this topic at different angles.
I talked with both Mary Lupien, councilmember for the City of Rochester, and Shirley Thompson, member of the Police Accountability Board Alliance (PABA), to learn more about their thoughts. I found common themes between both conversations. First, both do not support allocating more funding toward the Rochester Police Department (RPD) in order to bring in organizations to provide more trainings. According to the Police Accountability Board, the City of Rochester already spends arounds $150 million dollars annually on policing. But, could this already allocated funding be used in a more effective way that includes introducing restorative justice? It is important to ensure that if restorative justice is introduced, it is done so in an effective manner so it does not become merely a box to check without ensuring fidelity of implementation.
In December 2020, the Police Accountability Board (PAB) put out a draft of a series of recommendations for police reform and reinvention, in response to Governor Cuomo’s legislation to reform and reinvent police departments:
https://www.cityofrochester.gov/pab/answers/
One of the main goals of the draft is to hear from and work with the Rochester community to figure out how to best spend public safety dollars. While Mary is hesitant about investing more funds in policing, she does see possible strengths of holding restorative practices such as talking circles or community conversations that bring together community and police in the same space to have a conversation. However, both Mary and Shirley expressed questions about whether these healing conversations can happen before justice happens.
One of the toughest obstacles that would need to be thoroughly addressed is buy-in of all parties involved. Community members may need to know that their voices are heard and that real change will come from these conversations. The RPD may need to know that restorative practices actually work. One of the top recommendations from the PAB draft is that there needs to be a system to address work-related stress and trauma as a result from the job. Maybe restorative practices can play a role in this system to create buy-in and then it can develop into more effective community conversations.
I want to thank Mary Lupien and Shirley Thompson for talking with me. Shirley emphasized the importance of letting group thinking guide the conversation, so please keep having these important discussions to learn about other perspectives.
Thank you Ellie for bringing the wisdom from these two women in a clear and collective voice to guide the difficult work of what police accountability and community healing needs.