CASE STUDIES
Restorative Justice
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Author of case study: Marcela Torres Molano
Geopolitical location of space:
733 Portland Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota
55104
Extant? Yes
Architect:
Original architect unknown
Start date: 2019
End date: ongoing
The Circles of Peace initiative, held inside the Unity Unitarian Church, is part of an official justice approach that allows first time offenders to go through a restorative justice process instead of a traditional court session. If the offender completes the program their record will be clean.
Yes, racial and restorative justice processes take place here, fostering encounters between offenders and survivors, with community members facilitating the process. All participants are able to talk about the incident in this space.
Even though the space is not designed specifically for restorative justice purposes, it is arranged for group sessions where everyone gets to speak and everyone gets to be heard.
First time offenders who commit minor crimes will be allowed to resolve their cases in the restorative circle. After the offender completes the program the crime will be deleted from their record. Under this model, first-time offenders can resolve their crimes through talking it out in a restorative circle, instead of going to court, paying fines or spending time in jail.
How or to what extent is this space public?
This is a private space inside of a Unitarian church. The space is not exclusively used for restorative justice practices. It is an interior space inside of a church.
Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota, forms the “Twin Cities” with neighbouring Minneapolis. By 2018, it had a population of 307,695.
Area of St. Paul church building: 48,000 sq.ft
In 2013, the church building was expanded and renovated to include a revitalised entry courtyard, full accessibility on all levels of the facility, and new community gathering and educational spaces. The Circles of Peace are held in the centre room of the church, with a capacity of 25-30 people. It is an interior, central space without natural lighting or ventilation. The furniture is arranged to create a circle space that allows direct communication between participants. During the sessions the main element of the circles is a shining stone that serves as a talking piece.
The city attorney’s office launched the ETHOS program, working in collaboration with the Dispute Resolution Center of Saint Paul, and the initiative Circle of Peace to help design the program and train the facilitators. Every circle begins with a healthy meal prepared by volunteers. The Circle of Peace has an indigenous origin of being — communicating, building and maintaining relationships.
(ETHOS stands for Engaging community, Taking responsibility, Healing, Overcoming obstacles and Sustaining solutions.)
There are two main rules for the circle space:
1. Only speak when you’re holding the talking piece
2. What’s said in the circle stays in the circle.
They facilitate a weekly restorative-justice circle, a conversation intended to foster racial healing in the community. It began with the idea of communicating with families of St. Paul gang members, and later the city government adopted elements of circle practice for first-time offenders of minor crimes.
One of the program’s coordinators affirmed: “We find that it’s the best accountability that you could offer someone because they’re involved in how they want to repair the harm that they’ve caused.” The offender, the victim, and a community member facilitate the conversation around the incident. Community members get training from the expert and other facilitators to become “circle keepers”. The facilitator helps the two participants talk about what happened, what caused it, and how it can be resolved. Even though the city of Saint Paul has worked with restorative approaches before, this is the first time it has implemented a formal program.
is an author, speaker, columnist, and podcaster in the fields of architecture and decorative arts. She is completing her MA in Art History at Concordia University, Montréal, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Marketing from John Molson School of Business. She studied Industrial Psychology in Los Angeles, California. Sicotte is the author of two published books on design (2015, 2018) published by Les Éditions Cardinal.
is a Colombian PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. She has a background in architectural design and community activism and holds a master’s degree in Building and Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, England. Her interests focus on socially-engaged art, social movements, collaborative activism in post-conflict scenarios, collectively-produced art, and art produced in relation to the built environment.
is a PhD candidate in Humanities at Concordia University. His research focuses on spatial agency, social aesthetics, youth narratives, and graphic representations of urban memory. He has published on the relationship between children, play, and public space in Cartagena, Colombia. He has also worked as an editor on literary projects, including Territorio Fértil, which received the María Nelly Murillo Hinestroza award for Afro-Colombian literature.
is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice (Tier 2) at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada. Her research interests include low-income housing and participatory design, civil protest and urban design, and campus landscapes and race. Her publications include the co-edited book, Orienting Istanbul (2010) and solo-authored book, Istanbul Open City (2018).
is an artist and a professor of Art History at Concordia University. Her work focuses on women and the history of the built environment, urban landscapes, research-creation, and oral history. She has published on the spatial history of the suffrage movement, public art, gardens, and the politics of urban change. In addition to her research on the spaces of restorative and transitional justice, she is leading an oral history project on the urban memories of diverse Montrealers.
is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montreal (Quebec, Canada). He is also the second co-director of Concordia’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. His latest publications explore listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. For instance, see ‘Facilitating voicing and listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. The Colombian scenario.’ In: De Nardi, S., Orange, H., et al. Routledge Handbook of Memoryscapes. Routledge: London. (2019), and his article ‘Not being able to speak is torture: performing listening to painful narratives’. International Journal of Transitional Justice, Special Issue Creative Approaches to Transitional Justice: Contributions of Arts and Culture. (March, 2020)
