“He’s got a gun!”
On March 20, 2025, screams and high-pitched warnings came from a group of three children who rushed into the classroom where I was facilitating a workshop at Fred Roberts Park on the east side of South Central Los Angeles.
I ran outside and found a nine-year-old boy holding a realistic black BB gun resembling an automatic pistol with a removable clip for the pellets.
He was chasing other youth around the small courtyard.
I stopped him and explained the dangers of BB guns – seriously injuring or killing people and animals – and also that boys his size carrying toy guns had been shot and killed by law enforcement.
Later that night, I met with the boy again along with his mother and sister. I assured the children, teens and adults impacted that we would meet the following week to discuss their concerns and safety. I informed the parks department staff of the details.
I didn’t call law enforcement. No one else did either.
Across L.A. and the U.S., similar incidents trigger a 911 call, arrest – even of young children – and sometimes court and detention. In the worst cases, law enforcement have shot and killed youth who are holding a BB or toy gun, including 12-year-old Tamir Rice and at least 245 other people between 2014 and 2021 alone.
But too often, no one asks why a nine-year-old is carrying a weapon, why he is using it to intimidate or impress other people, and what else is going on in his life that leads him to feel like having a gun is important.
Equally significant, there is rarely follow-up to talk to the other people involved, to process their fears and anxieties and to ensure that they feel safe in their homes, schools, parks and streets.
Restorative and transformative justice processes (RJ and TJ) enable schools and communities to address violence and other harms and to prevent further victimization.
California’s Proposition 12 – prohibiting the caging of chickens for meat and egg production – went into effect on January 1, 2022.
We legislate cage-free chickens but not cage-free kids.
Widespread implementation of RJ and TJ are key to enabling California to end youth incarceration and eventually abolish the caging of all people.
Transformative Justice vs. the U.S. Criminal and Juvenile Injustice Systems
A police squad car flipped a U-turn and parked haphazardly near the curb.
The officers hopped out to confront a group of students outside my middle school.
Most of us weren’t even teenagers yet.
They ordered us to sit on the curb. One by one, they pulled each kid to their feet and patted them down. They dumped the contents of their backpacks onto the ground.
“Where are you from? What do they call you? Who do you run with?”
The confidence and dignity evaporated from each student’s face as they slumped back onto the sidewalk.
But when they got to me, I wasn’t frisked. My backpack wasn’t touched. Instead, the police pulled me aside and asked why I was there.
“Why are you hanging out with these people?”
I’m white. All the other youth were Black or Latino.
That day was my introduction to the U.S. criminal injustice system.
I started to recognize that conflicts and crime were dealt with in two ways – with street justice or court justice.
Neither process was fair. Neither process made people safer. We needed a third option.
As I got older, I engaged in an ongoing struggle to define justice and determine if it even existed.
Eventually for me, a third option emerged as transformative justice.
The movement to end police violence and dismantle mass incarceration
Across the world, a movement led by system-impacted youth and their families over several decades has resulted in dramatic changes.
Since the mid-2000s, I have been lucky as a community organizer to develop and push for changes in California state law and local Los Angeles City and County policies.
These policy changes have included eliminating gang injunctions and gang databases that criminalized people without due process, ending Life Without Parole for youth under 18 and extreme life sentences for youth under 26 years old, eliminating fare evasion – the number one cause of ticketing and debt – for youth statewide, and ending the use of solitary confinement in juvenile halls and youth prisons, eliminating probation supervision of youth in schools who haven’t been charged with a crime.
It guarantees all youth under 18 the right to speak to a defense attorney before being subjected to interrogation by law enforcement, and ending the prosecution of youth under the age of 12.
As a co-writer and co-coordinator of the campaign to pass Proposition 57, I celebrated as voters ended the power of District Attorney’s to direct file youth into adult court.
I worked with families whose loved ones had been killed by law enforcement to enact laws to reduce police use of force, address identity profiling by police, and create a de-certification process for officers ended in misconduct or violence.
Mobilizing youth impacted by arrest and court, we won policies to prioritize community development over court and incarceration, including replacing LA County Probation “juvenile” supervision and detention with the creation of LA’s Department of Youth Development, the closing of several local juvenile halls and Probation camps, and the dismantling of California’s youth prison system.
But, dismantling California’s expensive and ineffective addiction to suppression and incarceration is not enough. Harmful systems and institutions have to be replaced by community-based public safety strategies that can address crime and violence.
Schools and neighborhoods are developing restorative justice (RJ) and transformative justice (TJ) efforts to address conflict, reduce violence, repair harm and increase public safety.
Street Justice
Street justice rules on the block, but also at school, on the playground, and too often within our families.
Even before starting school, I learned that “might was right.” Whoever was most intimidating, was stronger or more violent won the fight and got the most loot – more food, nicer sneakers, a decision in their favor, control of money, greater respect.
Law enforcement continued to demonstrate that they were there to “protect and serve” me while patrolling and punishing people of color.
Twice during police stops – once by LAPD and once by Inglewood police – officers asked if I had been kidnapped.
Driving in Watts, officers pulled me over and didn’t even ask for my license or registration. They asked the two young men in the car if they were involved in a gang.
Another time driving just outside LAX, the LAPD stopped me.
Again, it was as if I was invisible.
The officer leaned in through my driver’s side window and looked straight past me. He asked the Latino male and two Black females in the car if they had drugs or guns.
Court Justice
As a teen and as an adult, I got arrested, locked up and went to court, mostly on theft or traffic charges.
I started to experience court justice. Lawyers for both the defense and prosecution battled for a win.
They spoke in a language none of us – neither the people accused or victims – could understand. Lawyers on both sides argued “on our behalf” without asking what we wanted or following our lead.
The process always depended on the accused being seen as 100% responsible and the victim as 100% innocent.
Despite claims that the system is about “rehabilitation,” discussions and decisions overwhelmingly prioritized punishment.
I started to go to court with families to support them through the court process. After 15 years, I’ve been to court with hundreds of people.
At the end of each court case, nearly all the crime survivors and those prosecuted have felt unheard, mistreated, battered and disappeared.
Maybe most important, in all the times I’ve been in court, I have rarely seen any attempt to repair the harm directly caused to individuals or the community.
Throughout the court and post-conviction process, most people are forbidden from contacting the victims in their case. Even restitution, when paid, is done in such a bureaucratic, indirect way that it does little to heal or change victims or the people convicted.
Instead, courts, juvenile halls, jails and prisons too often increase our anger, addictions and afflictions.
And having a record bans many people from accessing housing, employment, professional certification, even reuniting with their own children – the very opportunities needed to keep people financially and mentally stable, and prevent further victimization and recidivism.
Transformative Justice
A week after the nine-year-old brought a black BB gun to Fred Roberts Park, a group of 12 youth – ages 7 to 16 – sat in a circle on metal folding chairs inside the recreation center.
I told them that we would be meeting to discuss the incident that happened the previous week when the boy chased other youth around the park, shot the gun at least once, and pointed it at a parent.
Now sitting in the circle, some youth glanced nervously at the floor. A few immediately shouted opinions. Others whispered rumors to the person next to them. Some shifted forward in their seats, anxious to start the conversation.
I took out a small Zuni bear carving – less than 2 inches long – shaped from white Alabaster, with black obsidian eyes and a tiny turquoise dragonfly embedded into its side. I explained that only the person with the bear could speak.
The bear would be our microphone – passed around the circle, person to person – to ensure that everyone would have an equal opportunity to participate.
No one – no matter how bold or confident – could dominate the discussion.
I explained that for thousands of years, people all over the world used circles – just like the one we were sitting in – to set community priorities, make decisions and solve problems.
Circles, I added, are sacred because there is no one expert at the front leading the conversation or dictating a direction forward.
There might be a facilitator or “circle keeper,” to move the conversation, but no one sits above anyone else.
Furthermore, with a little preparation, a fair process and practice, all of them could also facilitate a discussion.
A circle prioritizes equality, inclusion and democracy. I explained that it also maximizes safety – used by both humans and animals – because each section of the circle can see potential threats coming up behind someone across from them.
The youngest and most vulnerable members of the community are protected within the center.
One by one, the youth spoke about the incident.
They debated potential consequences. Some said the boy needed to be “DP’d” – slang for disciplined – by other people who would beat him up as a punishment. Others spoke about the importance of second chances. A few emphasized the need to find out what people who hurt someone are themselves going through.
They discussed the stress, violence and peer pressure that leads youth to carry guns. And they learned about potential dangers.
We spoke about the people we knew who had been killed or injured by guns, the statistics on gun homicides for youth in Los Angeles County and the U.S., the risks of guns in a home leading to accidental shootings or suicides, the numerous incidents where people carrying a toy gun, including young children, are killed by law enforcement because the gun appears real.
In the end, they decided that the young boy should not be kicked out of the youth group or banned from the park. He and his family should have an opportunity to meet with us.
A second, similar meeting happened that same night with the mothers and grandmothers of youth who use the park.
They came up with the same conclusion. The boy and his family were invited to participate in a second circle and to hear community concerns and fears, to speak about the incident from their perspective, and to come up with an agreement for how to ensure safety for everyone moving forward.
The process we engaged in is known by some as restorative justice (RJ) or – if the process happens without any connection to law enforcement or courts – transformative justice (TJ).
Across the planet, RJ and TJ represent a growing alternative to court and incarceration. RJ and TJ processes are promoted both by efforts to reform the system and by abolition movements working to eliminate militarized policing and prisons.
They are ancient traditions rooted in many of the world’s indigenous cultures, where disputes were handled through community discussions centering the person or people impacted.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation describes restorative justice as “strategies that bring together people who have caused harm and those they have harmed to talk about what happened and collaborate on an appropriate solution outside of a more adversarial court proceeding.”
Internationally, RJ has replaced court systems, including in New Zealand following Maori cultural practices, throughout Zapatista territory in Chiapas, for many cases in the United Kingdom and Canada, and through the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions established to address the atrocities of Apartheid in South Africa and genocide in Rwanda.
But, in the U.S., many RJ models are closely tied to or run by courts or law enforcement. Too often, people have to claim their “guilt” or culpability for a crime, even before a hearing, in exchange for participation in an RJ process.
For a growing number of communities in the U.S., TJ serves as an alternative to harsh school discipline processes that push many youth out of school. TJ can enable communities to address safety concerns without risking police violence or warehousing millions of people in dehumanizing juvenile halls, jails and prisons.
Transform Harm defines TJ as “an abolitionist framework that understands systems such as prisons, police and I.C.E. as sites where enormous amounts of violence take place and as systems that were created to be inherently violent in order to maintain social control.”
Transformative justice separates conflict resolution processes entirely from the system. For me, TJ also focuses on addressing root causes and changing the policies that maintain violence and victimization.
Process Differences
Criminal and Juvenile Court is concerned with:
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What law was broken?
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Who broke it?
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What punishment is warranted?
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Competition between lawyers – assumes two opposing sides.
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Assumes guilty and innocent parties – victim and perpetrator.
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Not responsible for determining or addressing root causes of conflict.
Restorative and Transformative Justice addresses:
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Who was harmed? Center the person or people most impacted.
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What are the needs and responsibilities of those involved?
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How do all affected parties together address needs and repair harm?
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Is non-adversarial. Seeks an outcome all parties can agree to.
In addition, I believe that Transformative Justice should ask:
5. What are the root causes of the conflict
6. What community and/or societal change is needed to change relationships, conditions and power?
Transformative Justice seeks to abolish unjust laws and systems. It operates outside the oversight, control or involvement of law enforcement, courts, punitive school discipline and push-out, or detention and prison facilities.
Transformative Justice can’t happen within our current U.S. court systems.
Unlike the court system, TJ focuses on determining who was harmed and how to repair that harm, creating an agreement to better ensure safety and healing for all involved.
In court, the opportunity to explore – let alone address – root causes is rare. In some cases, conflicts have raged for decades. But on a single day, whoever calls the cops or bleeds onto the sidewalk is labeled the victim and the other person or people are considered the perpetrators.
Twice I saw surviving family members of a murder victim ask for a sentence lighter than the maximum.
A mom cried at Compton Court and turned both to the defendant and his family to say how sorry she was, acknowledging that everyone was being severely hurt by the events that led to her son’s killing.
Families, she said, bury a child in a grave one day only to bury another child in prison the next.
On Feb. 3, 2025, a young man who had served 16 years on a 50 to Life sentence he received as a 17-year-old was back in juvenile court.
Proposition 57 eliminated the power of district attorneys to direct-file California youth into adult court, enabling him to petition for the juvenile court transfer hearing he was initially denied.
The daughter of the security guard who was murdered in the attempted robbery testified that she forgave the man who killed her father and had faith in the ability of everyone to change.
Despite her being a victim in the case, the court commissioner overseeing the hearing challenged her. He said he felt both the defendant and his actions were “selfish.”
As a teen, the convicted man was a “jerk hanging out with other jerks,” the commissioner said earlier.
But the woman turned away from the prosecutor who was questioning her and fixed her eyes on the commissioner. “I work with youth,” she said. She added that she understood the pressures on young people in neighborhoods where both money and opportunities for legal work are scarce. “I believe in second chances.”
I was 7 or 8, and stretched on my toes to reach the bell on my neighbor’s door.
Piled into my rusty wagon were several crayon drawings that my friends and I created on white poster boards. They included a tiny polar bear cub leaning against its dead mother as blood seeped into the snow, black clouds pouring from factory smokestacks blanketed by a smog-filled sky, fish carcasses and trash washed up on a dirty beach and more.
I sold the posters door-to-door and told each buyer that the money was going to the Sierra Club. But I pocketed the money. I didn’t share my intentions or the profits with my friends who helped create the posters.
Someone told my mom and she made me return the money and apologize for what I had done.
I cried and begged not to have to do it. Each encounter was hard. I felt embarrassed and ashamed.
I never stole again from a classmate, neighbor or community store.
I experienced that basic step in defining and upholding justice – not in court or a cell – but in my community.
Police and the court system never required me to apologize to anyone I had hurt or do anything to address what I had done. I escaped the one thing that should be demanded most – remorse, atonement and sincere acknowledgement of how my actions hurt others.
It was the easiest part of the process.
My mom knew what moms everywhere know. True accountability and healing happens when a person has to apologize for – and also repair – what they have done wrong.
Resources
Building Accountable Communities What is Transformative Justice?
Transformative Justice Initiative at St. Louis University
Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois
Restorative Justice Exchange of Prison Fellowship International
