This chapter presents an overview of the restorative justice movement in the twenty-first century. Restorative justice, on the other hand, offers a very different way of understanding and responding to crime. Instead of viewing the state as the primary victim of criminal acts and placing victims, offenders, and the community in passive roles, restorative justice recognizes crime as being directed against individual people. The values of restorative justice are also deeply rooted in the ancient principles of Judeo-Christian culture. A small and scattered group of community activists, justice system personnel, and a few scholars began to advocate, often independently of each other, for the implementation of restorative justice principles and a practice called victim-offender reconciliation (VORP) during the mid to late 1970s. Some proponents are hopeful that a restorative justice framework can be used to foster systemic change. Facilitation of restorative justice dialogues rests on the use of humanistic mediation.

This chapter describes some of the recent restorative justice innovations and research that substantiates their usefulness. It explores developments in the conceptualization of restorative justice based on emergence of new practices and reasons for the effectiveness of restorative justice as a movement and restorative dialogue as application. Chaos theory offers a better way to view the coincidental timeliness of the emergence of restorative justice as a deeper way of dealing with human conflict. The chapter reviews restorative justice practices that have opened up areas for future growth. Those practices include the use of restorative practices for student misconduct in institutions of higher education, the establishment of surrogate dialogue programs in prison settings between unrelated crime victims and offenders. They also include the creation of restorative justice initiatives for domestic violence and the development of methods for engagement between crime victims and members of defense teams who represent the accused offender.

The concept of risk behaviors became a model for public health interventions in the late 1970s and 1980s. This chapter describes contemporary knowledge on the risk behaviors of gender and sexual minority (GSM) persons. It highlights research findings, with particular attention paid to studies of different GSM subgroups, and evaluates interventions that have sought to modify behaviors in the pursuit of better health outcomes. The chapter then focuses on the potential contributions of other theoretical frameworks to the study of GSM risk behaviors, including opportunities to incorporate disclosure, resilience, intersectionality, and minority stress theories. It also presents recommendations for future directions for researching health risk behaviors among GSM persons, addressing the risk of harming GSM populations, and diverting attention and resources from addressing justice and social determinants of GSM health. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research and interventions in support of more equitable health outcomes.

Reformed churches are predominantly Presbyterian in polity, where the congregation is governed by a group of elected elders who are lay persons and a minister. Regional groups of churches form a Presbytery, and groups of Presbyteries form Synods that together form the national General Assembly. The Reformed Tradition is monotheistic, affirming one God, in three persons. The persons of the Trinity are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Reformed Christians are called, always and everywhere, to a committed pursuit of social justice and human wholeness. Disease, illness, suffering, and death, and indeed natural disaster as well, are a consequence of humankind’s choosing to go its own way and to live. Theologically, death is a consequence of human willfulness or going our own way in disobedience to God. Reformed Christian religious terminology reflects, in large part that found in mainstream Protestant Christian traditions.

This chapter introduces the scope of this volume by reviewing thirteen guiding principles for a new field of equity in health. The thirteen guiding principles are: The drive for a major paradigm shift, the drive for new models of health care and training, the drive for new theories, perspectives, and identities, the drive for evidence-based approaches, the drive for transdisciplinary teams and community-based participatory research, the drive for globalization and global collaboration, the drive for cultural competence and cultural appropriateness, the drive for health literacy and linguistic appropriateness, the drive to ensure the right to health, the drive for social justice and acknowledgment of forces in the social context, the drive to protect and support the most vulnerable, the drive to repair damage, restore trust, and take responsibility, and the drive to redistribute wealth and access to opportunity. These principles provide hope for a future global transformation in health.

Mental health professionals play a critical role in enforcing social justice in mental health care service. This chapter discusses various characteristics of and attitudes about mental health services that may serve as barriers to parity in mental health service delivery and services among African Americans. It describes strategies for mental health providers and systems in addressing these service delivery disparities. These strategies improve the quality of mental health services for African American clients, minimize structural barriers in the receipt of mental health care among African Americans, and decreases the stigma associated with counseling use among African Americans and promote more favorable help-seeking attitudes among African Americans. Mental health professionals should work at the individual, community, and institutional levels to address external barriers, differential quality of care, and beliefs that African Americans may bring into their interactions with mental health systems.

This chapter lays the foundation for facilitative leadership from the unique social work perspective. Social work’s Code of Ethics and social work practice principles contribute to the value-based leadership that is part of the facilitative leader’s core. Among the important expectations of social work leadership are cultural sensitivity and competence. Five discussion areas have been selected as essential to facilitative leadership from a social work perspective: inclusion, strengths-based leadership, power and the difference between power over and power with, oppression and social justice, and the elusive but critically important concept of empowerment. There are different types of power and power relationships such as productive power and destructive power. Being conscious of privilege and oppression are precursors to understanding social injustice and working toward social justice. The social work program identifies social justice as a professional obligation of social workers to attempt to improve the quality of all people’s lives.

This chapter introduces the theoretical basis for restorative justice (RJ). It assesses the empirical evidence for RJ programs, and explores the challenges and opportunities associated with applying core competencies. The chapter describes competencies of specific interest which include: engaging diversity and difference in practice, and engaging with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. It also discusses skills essential to the success of RJ which include supporting processes that value the experiences of people associated with a crime or harm. The chapter suggests the importance of practical and context-specific knowledge and skills relevant when individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities find themselves in conflict and require support. Programs that rely upon restorative principles have been used at a variety of points in the criminal justice process. The chapter discusses a practice, a family group conference, which was first developed in New Zealand involving social workers considerably.

This chapter discusses the concepts, underlying principles, benefits, and challenges of using “whole-family” approaches in social work. It articulates the theory and skills associated with family engagement as part of a human rights and social justice framework for social work practice in forensic settings. The chapter describes the ethical imperatives and evidence base supporting the use of family group decision making (FGDM) in regulatory settings. It engages whole families as partners in the use of FGDM in child protection and youth justice. The chapter also describes the theory, empirical support, and skills in use of FGDM, or family group conferencing (FGC). It concluded with an example of how alert forensic social workers must be to the potential for their best intentions to collide with the tenants of responsive practice and a quote from a child protection social worker who worked closely with the author on a pilot project using FGC.

This chapter emphasizes the importance of improving health literacy. It describes the incorporation of cultural competence standards in forensic social work practice perspectives. The chapter also explains how to promote engagement of informal support networks in promoting health and well-being among diverse groups. Disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities in the United States have long been overrepresented in the criminal justice systems. The elimination of health care disparities and ensuring the health care delivery system is responsive to minority groups is a social justice issue. The roles and function of forensic social workers that provide services to persons with these cultural norms can be expanded using a broader ecological framework and the applied social care model to develop intervention strategies and care plans with incarceration persons. Identifying and incorporating culturally appropriate practice approaches are challenging, yet necessary undertakings for forensic social workers.