What would it take to move beyond punishment and toward true accountability and healing? In this episode of Next Economy Now, restorative justice (RJ) practitioner Tatiana Chaterji shares her journey as a survivor, educator, and advocate working to create alternatives to the punitive systems that dominate today’s responses to harm. With over a decade of experience in education, prisons, and community organizing, Tatiana is helping shape a vision of justice rooted in collective care and systemic transformation.
Tatiana explains how restorative justice practices, with roots in Indigenous traditions, create space for truth-telling, accountability, and healing. She shares her personal story of surviving a violent crime and how participating in surrogate victim-offender dialogues helped her find connection and deeper healing. The episode also explores how restorative practices can support social-emotional learning in schools and help address structural harm in organizations and communities.
This conversation offers a powerful look at how restorative justice can help build a society rooted in accountability and healing. Listen in to learn how restorative justice can help build a world that supports safety, dignity, and wholeness for all.
Key Points From This Episode:
Introducing Tatiana Chaterji, restorative justice (RJ) work, and RJ’s Indigenous roots. [0:01:03]
Critiquing the prison system and how to build a justice model that recognizes both harm and the humanity of all involved. [0:10:48]
Tatiana’s story of surviving a violent hit-and-run and traumatic injury, and how the police failed to investigate and dismissed her case. [0:14:05]
The process of taking part in surrogate victim-offender dialogues and how it helped Tatiana find closure and heal. [0:22:54]
Unpacking the sincerity and rigor of restorative work, even inside prisons. [0:33:36]
Why we should be working towards a society without prisons. [0:37:21]
Details of the book Tatiana is working on for restorative justice work in schools. [0:38:32]
Why true accountability requires support, not just punishment or permissiveness. [0:39:55]
RJ approaches to addressing sexual harm in schools and workplaces. [0:45:25]
Where you can find Tatiana online and what to expect from her upcoming book. [0:48:39]
Quotes:
“Restorative justice is a set of practices that challenges us to move from our authentic selves. We can locate some of the origins in indigenous peacemaking.” — Tatiana Chaterji [0:03:08]
“A lot of the Native people who have held these traditions have been erased from the conversation, and I think it's really important to be accountable for that when it comes to the Indigenous origins [of] what people call Native peacemaking processes.” — Tatiana Chaterji [0:03:40]
“I would say that most people who are serving time, serving a criminal sentence, or are on probation, or in other ways surveilled or detained by the state, that these individuals are also harmed in some way.” — Tatiana Chaterji [0:11:04]
“In the case of the offenders or the people who caused harm, they only do this [process of victim-offender dialogue] after a year or longer of preparation. They go through [an] intensive curriculum and exercises to understand what happened and how this has happened.” — Tatiana Chaterji [0:25:37]
“If you think about our criminal legal system, you are discouraged from taking responsibility, even if you know that you did it, even if you believe that it would make it better if you admitted it, you are discouraged.” — Tatiana Chaterji [0:26:40]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Tatiana Chaterji: https://www.tatianachaterji.com/
Tatiana Chaterji on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tatianachaterji/
Partners for Collaborative Change: https://www.collabchange.org/
Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth: https://rjoyoakland.org/
MEND Collaborative: https://mendcollaborative.org/
Insight Prison Project: http://www.insightprisonproject.org/
Phoenix Soleil: https://phoenixsoleil.mystrikingly.com/
Phoenix Soleil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phoenix-soleil-68b4431/
Centre for Non-Violent Communication: https://www.cnvc.org/
More on Surrogate Repair:
Surrogate repair is a strategy within restorative justice where people who have not directly harmed or been harmed by each other. It happens when either the survivor or the offender is not available, ready, or willing to participate in meeting directly with the other party.
Read a description of this process from the MEND Collaborative, a trusted organization that facilitates this crucial work with incarcerated people and survivors of violence and crime. Tatiana wrote a piece of creative nonfiction capturing her experience with surrogate victim offender dialogue here: https://mendcollaborative.org/surrogate-restorative-justice-circles-and-survivor-support/
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