The cycle of punitive justice starts in schools. Eric Butler is showing kids and teachers how to break it.

After a school in Jefferson Parish gained national notoriety for having an 8th grader sent to juvenile jail for six days for tossing Skittles on a school bus, the area's schools reformed school discipline by adopting a system of mediation and community conflict resolution based on restorative justice principles. In the first year, one middle school's suspensions have dropped by more than half. Racial disparities in school suspensions or arrests have led many other schools to follow a similar path. Success seems to depend on making restorative justice central to the mission, not just a disciplinary add-on.

The state of Arkansas cares deeply about the wellbeing of its students, as evidenced by its flourishing system of alternative schools that provide extra counseling in academics, social and mental support, and research-backed techniques that reduce bad behavior, poor grades, and absenteeism. The schools even work to dismantle the taboo around alternative schools, presenting them as an intervention rather than a punishment. The introduction of these schools correlates with a decline in Arkansas' overall dropout rate from 2002 to 2012, and nearly 10% of its graduates have spent time in alternative education.

Palm Beach County, Florida has many of the same social problems that Philadelphia has, including “gangs, drugs, and poverty.” However, their school system has managed to keep students safe by employing “safe-school case managers” who build relationships with students, and they offer a youth court that is a system run by students who peer-review cases of unrest. The initiatives in this county has prevented school violence from happening without metal detectors and just two police officers.

In some regions of Czechia, “one in 10 children fails to advance to the next grade.” Every year 2,000 students drop out. One school in the town of Trmice doesn’t have this problem. The school has low dropout rates and the number of students going on to university keeps growing. Their model of empathy, understanding, avoiding punishment, and establishing deep-rooted relationships with families and students is working. “To react with understanding.” “Trmice’s success depends on two things: good communication with families and work with the teaching staff.”

Philadelphia has made a concerted effort toward reducing the number of youth being arrested in schools. Leadership, including the school police commissioner and district attorney, changed procedures so that youth, instead of getting arrested, are enrolled in diversion programs. While there’s been pushback from some law enforcement, early studies have pointed to a decline in arrests without a decline in safety.

In Newark Youth Court, the common mistakes and misbehavior of childhood lead to a trial in which all of the participants are high school students, and the outcomes center on second chances and atoning for wrongdoing through community service and decision-making classes. The court, which hears about 100 cases per year, serves as an alternative to pushing allegations of minor fights, vandalism, and truancy into the justice system, where punishment falls most heavily on youth of color and can wreck lives without solving the discipline problems.

The Highline school district in Washington implemented a radical strategy to break the school-to-prison pipeline based on mounting data that suspensions push students into a cycle of violence and delinquency. However, theories of replacing punitive measures with counseling and academic triage have proven difficult to translate from idea to practice, and teachers have resigned over fear for their safety. But one teacher at Pacific Middle School found a way to make the approach work, and the district is promising to scale his model, determined to meet their original objectives and reach kids that need help.

Young black males in Oakland are suspended more frequently and graduate high school at a much lower rate than their peers. A charter school specifically designed for African American boys focuses on providing them with role models to create a supportive environment, combat the effects of trauma, and push them to succeed.

Modeled on a long-running and successful program in Oakland, Philadelphia schools' Relationships First program uses restorative justice to reform school discipline. The program follows a three-step approach to changing culture. At its core, teachers and students deepen their relationships so that when they use group dialogue to address the harm that people have caused, the chances for healing are greater. Violence has dropped when it was used in one Philadelphia neighborhood in cases of serious offenses. In Oakland, expulsions, suspensions, and racial disparities are all way down.

"Policing the teen brain" is a training regimen devised by Strategies for Youth that teaches police officers to de-escalate conflicts with adolescents to avoid unnecessary incarceration. Youth detention has dropped significantly since Tippecanoe County put most of its officers through the training. Police learn how to account for teens' lowered impulse control and undeveloped problem solving skills. The county decided to pay for the expensive training because detention, which hits Black youth hardest, can be even more costly – and leave lasting damage in the lives of young people.