ABSTRACT
This chapter witnesses the culmination of 15 years of work within Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to introduce the principles and practices of restorative justice to mitigate the devastating and disproportionate effects of the school-to-prison pipeline on Chicago's young people of color. The unchanged imperative for the many people involved in Chicago's important restorative justice work has been to ensure CPS provides safe, secure, and successful education for all of its students and that in its disciplinary procedures there is equity and social justice. The chapter presents a case study of a north side Chicago nonprofit agency called Alternatives, that has been working for over 15 years with CPS to establish restorative justice within the school system. It focuses on the neighborhood geography of Chicago, are a good mirror of the racial and ethnic segregation patterns that are so evident in the city. Young people of color make up the dominant populations of the school clusters with the highest dropout rates.
