Restorative versus Punitive Methods - Which works the best?

Tallulah:
In my opinion, it feels quite good when the person gets punished after they’ve hurt me, but I know once their punishment’s over and they come back out, nothing’s changed. So my conclusion is that no matter how good it feels when they get in trouble, it won’t change how they feel about you.

Luke:
I don’t think people should be punished for what they did. I think people should talk about it so they can work out their issues/problems.
If you do this they will understand what they did and it won’t happen again.
But if you punish them they will just get more angry and do it again because they think that’s their ticket to do it again, but the feelings about the other person are still there.

Gemma:
When I had a fight earlier this year, we first didn’t want to sort it out by talking, but instead of punishment, which isn’t cool, we decided to talk it out, and now we’re on an okay basis.

Kenny:
I think the restorative method works better because if you punish a kid they will do what ever they did after the detention. If the person who has done something has a chance to talk about it to the victim, they can sort it out so it doesn’t happen again.

Alex:
I think that talking and sorting it out is better than just getting a detention and having to write out 5 pages of the dictionary or something like that. But sorting it out can be very stressful on teachers and in some cases even harder for the student to front up to what they have done. So students just want to be punished sometimes because they don’t want to face what they have done. If they don’t sort it out it’s more likely to happen again.

Jack H:
I think talking about the problem is better than not doing anything to help the problem between the two people.
If they got punished again and again for doing the same thing they will soon get used to the same punishment happening and not learn anything. However if they were to talk about it with adults, the adults could find out the problem and resolve it rather than punishing them again and again.

Quinn:
I think that punishments are good and bad. They’re good because depending on what the punishment is it could make them regret what they have done or if it is something simple then they will think they will get punished and then do it again because the punishment is easy and they get use to it and they find ways to make it shorter.
I think that it would be harder for the person to face up to the victim and say they’re sorry and think of something they could do to make them not do it again and then say what it was.

Eric:
I think that the restorative method works best because if you punish a kid, he/she will get angry at the one that told on them and will want revenge.
The restorative method asks why you did the crime so that the victim and the criminal can know what they both felt and the criminal will want no vengeance or anything like that.

Hunter:
When I had a fight at my old school no one knew about it except my friends. I wanted to tell my teacher but I had a feeling that I was going to go to detention. I told my teacher and he said to me, “Did you win?” and I was like, “Serious?” and he said to me, “What are you going to do about it?” so I went to his class and I had to talk to him and we were friends again. If I had just had a detention, he would still be wanting an apology.

Taylor:
Punishment:
Isn’t helping anyone whatsoever.
No one’s learning from their mistakes.
If teachers keep on giving unfit punishments, children keep giving unfit responses, and so on.
No one’s apologising or forgiving, so then the child that is getting no justice thinks that they can’t defend themselves because the offender will keep offending because they think it’s okay to do so.
It’s bad because then parents ring school thinking that their child got no justice and wanting the bully to get an especially harsh punishment, which the bully will do then bully the boy again (full circle).

Restorative punishment:
I think that this is a better approach because the naughty kid will feel guilty and silly when they apologise to the kid that they hurt, and the kid that is getting apologised to will be pleased that they are getting a sincere apology that the kid is embarrassed by... meaning that the bully won’t want to do that again.
The bully won’t like it so they will stop (problem solved).
If the kid does something that involves the class, most of the time they have to get up in front of the class and apologise = complete embarrassment = kid not wanting to do that again.

CONCLUSION:
Punishment = Kids not caring about what they have done and think it’s okay to do it again.
Restorative punishment= kids feeling embarrassed when they apologise and not wanting to do that again = everyone happy.

What it feels like being a victim:
When I am a victim then I always like to think I am going to get a sincere apology from that person and then we can both move on.

If the person received a punishment then they could just keep hurting me and I couldn’t do much about it.