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In the fall of 2019, the Detroit Justice Center (DJC) undertook a national and local ecosystem assessment of Restorative Justice (RJ) programs and practitioners who are using RJ as a means to building alternative models of justice and accountability that is responsive to the needs of survivors and functions to reduce future harm. An emergent theme across conversations with Detroit-area practitioners was a desire to advance RJ across local sectors. Naturally, DJC and our partners recognized that the sustainable advancement of RJ necessitates strong organizing via the centralizing of local resources. To this end, the vision for the Metro Detroit Restorative Justice Network (MDRJN) was conceived. The MDRJN is therefore a special project of the Just Cities Lab at the Detroit Justice Center.

mission

The Metro Detroit Restorative Justice Network (MDRJN) is a diverse network comprising practitioners, advocates, and community members united in our commitment to fostering a sustainable restorative justice infrastructure. We aim to promote systemic alternatives to punitive justice by increasing support for and access to restorative practices.

Traditional approaches to addressing harm have prioritized the interests and perspectives of system actors such as law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. Unfortunately, this emphasis on punitive responses often neglects the needs of those directly affected by the harm. Consequently, it fails to facilitate genuine accountability based on the expressed needs of all involved parties. This systemic disregard for person-centered justice processes perpetuates harm and hampers the progress of healing.

Recognizing these inherent flaws, the MDRJN embraces Restorative Justice and Restorative Practices as viable alternatives to punitive justice. Restorative Justice places the needs of those directly impacted at the forefront and strives to honor those needs accordingly. We advocate for a holistic, person-centered vision of justice that recognizes the importance of various operative alternatives to retributive justice. Through this approach, we aim to not only address harm but also prevent its recurrence in the future.

We are dedicated to collaborating with individuals, organizations, and communities to promote a more equitable and transformative justice system. By embracing restorative principles, we can forge a path toward healing, accountability, and, ultimately, a more just society.

Angel McKissic

Founder, Metro Detroit Restorative Justice Network

Angel McKissic is a parent, researcher, and community organizer. She is the Senior Program Manager in the Just Cities Innovation Lab at the Detroit Justice Center and Founder of the Metro Detroit Restorative Justice Network, a network of restorative justice practitioners committed to increasing public literacy and access to restorative justice in Detroit. Through her work with the network, she tries (and sometimes fails) to lead by embodying her values: justice, relationship, and rigorous accountability, and believes in iterative experimentation as a critical praxis. She is encouraged, challenged, and nourished by her children, community, and network colleagues. Angel earned a B.S. in Psychology, an M.A. in Clinical Psychology and is a trained psychotherapist. She is completing a Ph.D. in Gender and Sexuality at the University of Birmingham (UK), researching theoretical constructions of empowerment through Black women's lived experience. She believes in decentralized, intergenerational, community-based power as foundational to all liberation movements.

Barbara Jones - Wayne State University | Faculty, Center for Peace and Conflict Studies

Barbara L. Jones, lifelong Detroiter and community activist, organizer and youth-violence prevention advocate is the Community Dispute Resolution Specialist and Faculty Instructor for the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Wayne State University. She is the Program Director for the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute, a program that delivers expertise training in a higher learning academic setting that provides high school youth development services that focus on civic engagement, conflict resolution intervention, violence prevention, bullying, diversity, civil rights, race relations, negotiation, leadership, international affairs, diplomacy, social justice and crucial life skills with the overarching theme and tools of how to teach students to individually and collectively foster peace within their own schools and communities.

Barbara has over 22 years of broadcast media advertising and marketing experience. She has worked for media organizations including Continental Cable, Media One, AT & T, Comcast, Clear Channel and WDET Detroit Public Radio. Her teaching experience also includes Career Services Advisor and Instructor for Specs Howard School of Media Arts and Adjunct Faculty with Wayne County Community College District.

Barbara mentors and advocates for the youth and students at WSU as well as scores of youth in Detroit and in the metro Detroit area in a variety of capacities in schools and organizations

Belinda Dulin - Dispute Resolution Center | Executive Director

Belinda Dulin is the Executive Director of The Dispute Resolution Center, serving Washtenaw and Livingston Counties. As the executive director of the DRC, she and her team have implemented a variety of conflict resolution programs in district and circuit courts. Additionally, services have been provided to schools serving students, families, and school staff in identifying and resolving barriers and issues that affect student relationships. The DRC partners with the Washtenaw County Peacemaking Court to provide peacemaking circles to families in the child protection and delinquency systems.

Tashmica Torok - Firecracker Foundation | Founding Co-Director

Tashmica Torok is a nationally recognized survivor activist working to end child sexual abuse. She is a powerhouse fundraiser and movement maker who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless volunteer hours to support her work.

She is a member of the Just Beginnings Inaugural Cohort, Lansing Area Transformative Justice Collective, MSU’s SANE Advisory Board, and Survivor Strong’s Board of Directors. She has trained hundreds of parents, educators, social workers, and other community stakeholders in topics related to child sexual abuse, trauma, militant self-care, and prevention. She is also a published storyteller. Most recently, she is a contributor to Love With Accountability: Digging up the roots of child sexual abuse which is currently available on AK Press.

Tashmica has been awarded the Michigan Jaycees Foundation’s Outstanding Young Michigander Award in 2014, USA Network’s 2015 Characters Unite Award, the 2016 Emerging Leader Award from Sistrum: the Lansing Women’s Chorus, Child Advocate of the Year 2017 by the Lansing Exchange Club, and was the inaugural recipient of the Greater Lansing Inspirational Woman of the Year Award, in 2019. Most recently, she was appointed by Governor Whitmer to the Michigan Committee on Juvenile Justice.

Her biggest thrill continues to be accomplishing her heart work at The Firecracker Foundation with healing children, teens and families. As the executive director of The Firecracker Foundation, she incites riots of generosity and advocates for the healing of children and families every day. Tashmica is the kind of friend who always encourages you to do more. She’s a published storyteller and a nearly retired roller derby skater. She’s also the mother of three children, wife to a talented tile installer and a behind-the-scenes volunteer

Carrie Landrum - University of Michigan Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX and Prevention Education, Assistance and Resources | Adaptable Resolution and Restorative Practices Lead

Carrie belongs to Waawiiyaatanong, the crooked way where the river bends (Anishinaabemowin for Detroit). She tends land and plants seeds in the Lower Rouge River Watershed on land stewarded by Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandotte tribes. She circled up with Grace Lee Boggs, Barbara L. Jones, Belinda Dulin, and others during the first contemporary gatherings of “restorative justice practitioners” in Michigan 2011 - 2014 organized in collaboration with Marcia Lee and other affiliates of the Detroit Area Restorative Justice Network. Carrie has also circled up with Fania Davis, Kay Pranis, Mark Umbreit, and Howard Zehr, among others; has learned restorative practices from sujatha baliga, Timothy Connors, Michael Petoskey, Edward Valandra, Robert Yazzie, and others; and has danced restorative practices with Katie Mansfield and many others.

Carrie was appointed as one of the commissioners on the Metro Detroit Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Racial Inequality in 2011 and received a University of Michigan Distinguished Diversity Leader award the same year. She has been facilitating restorative practices at the University of Michigan since 2007, including for cases of sexual harms since 2013. In 2017 Carrie was honored to represent the direction of South (emotions) in a large peacemaking circle three rings deep at the University of Michigan School of Social Work organized with Sandra Momper (Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians) and Niigaanii gimaakwe Abigail Eiler (of the Shawnee and Tuscarora). Carrie serves as the Adaptable Resolution and Restorative Practices Lead within the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX office of the University of Michigan, whose mission and work was made possible by land ceded to the university by the Three Fires Confederacy in 1817 in the Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids.

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