ABSTRACT
Restorative justice practices are being regarded increasingly as attractive options for dealing with wrongdoing in school communities. Traditional punishments of a social kind, such as suspension or expulsion, are being sidelined as tools of last resort as researchers and practitioners document the negative consequences of allowing children ‘to be at a loose end’ in the community (Hirschi 1969; Jenkins 1997; Cunningham and Henggeler 2001). Geographically and socially separated from family and friends who are enmeshed in education and employment networks for most of their day, children who are suspended or expelled are even more at risk than they were previously to being trapped within subcultures that operate at the fringe of, if not outside, the law.
