Margaret Thorsborne
Entrevistador(a): Marcela Torres
Idioma de entrevista: Inglés
País donde trabaja: Nueva Zelanda
Profesión: Restorative Justice practitioner

Margaret Thorsborne has been a restorative justice facilitator for more than twenty-five years in different locations including New Zealand, London, and South-East Asia. She was part of the transition from the youth traditional justice system to restorative school practices in New Zealand, which has aimed to keep young offenders out of criminal records. According to Thorsborne, spaces dedicated to restorative practices are extremely important to make individuals feel conformable, since they enhance the capacity of connection between participants.

During our conversation, Thorsborne talks about some critical cases of restorative justice in schools and the rooms used for these practices, differentiating between good and bad spaces for restorative purposes. She highlights the importance of privacy, adequate furniture and spatial flexibility, as well as the need for one specific “neutral” room for certain encounters. Further, she explains the importance of using calming colours in the walls to ensure peacefulness in the room, and making sure to take into consideration practices with youth with special needs who might be sensitive to certain lighting, or for whom the space might trigger some difficult past experiences. 

Lastly, Thorsborne describes having a purpose-built space for preparatory and restoration practices as a luxury, and explains the urgency for schools to start having specific rooms designated for restorative practices. She describes the perfect space as a room with proper decoration, control over the lighting and sound, art on the walls, and beautiful posters with graphics about restorative practices and peacemaking. To finalise, she clarifies it would be ideal to have a series of three spaces: one for large groups, one for smaller groups, and one for an interview space; all of them would require an adjacent kitchen space for food sharing, or as she calls it, “Breaking Bread with the Enemy.”