RES-Q : bringing restorative justice practices to children in conflict with law through play
ResQ is a design intervention developed during a systems project at NID to bring in restorative justice practices for reformation in the Juvenile Justice System in India.
Areas of focus : Restorative Justice | Game Design | Human Centred Design
Restorative Justice is focused on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with the victim or community. It seeks to understand the circumstances around the person and the triggers that lead to the act of crime.
ResQ provides counselors, parents, and adults a tool/method of conducting restorative circles for children. A restorative circle brings together people in a situation of conflict and initiate a conversation as equals to see a situation in its entirety and decide further course of action. After introducing children to this tool and method they will be able to sustain this practice without a facilitator. This game is intended to improve community building amongst children and build an understanding of the consequences of their actions.
The project was undertaken by Aishwarya Narvekar, Aishwarya Rane, Kamal, and Pankaj Yadav at the National Institute of Design, India.
Systems Thinking for Juvenile Reforms-
The journey of ResQ started during an academic project at NID. This academic project revolved around systems-oriented design and let us explore the interconnected nature of problems we want to solve and the larger systems they are a part of.
The systems project Juvenile Reforms by Design began with the purpose to understand the juvenile justice system in India in its entirety and find the most effective method of reformation for juvenile delinquents . As designers, the role of children and their journey as primary stakeholders in the complex system of justice and reformation intrigued us.
As the project progressed the focus evolved into an understanding of the role design and designers could play in the process of reform and rehabilitation. Looking at children as our core stakeholders, we tried to study this system with a human-centered approach trying to understand what drives the process of reformation inside, for the children.
Design, as a process, and drawing, as a tool, also helped us break barriers in communication and expression with the children who have been in a closed institution during the important years of their development.
The Juvenile Reforms in India -
The reformation of children under 18 years of age who come in conflict with the law happens through the Juvenile Justice System in India. This system which deals specifically with children has been neglected and inaccessible for long.
The system reinforces “reformation” over deterrence but the varying attitudes and lack of sensitization while dealing with children has affected what reformation means.
Children who come under the purview of this system get a chance to come out as contributing members of society (after a maximum stay of 3 years). Therefore, proper reformation and rehabilitation of children is essential over punishment.
Challenges in the present system of reformation -
During the course of the project, we spoke to different stakeholders of the system and visited 4 Children’s Homes across Gujarat and Maharashtra which included Observation homes and Places of safety. Observation Homes are temporary residences for children in trial and the Place of safety holds children who have been convicted of serious or heinous crimes. The purpose of these visits was to get a real-life understanding of how the reformation process goes about, observe how children respond to current methods in place and interact with children through drawing and expression oriented tools to get a view of the process from their perspective. We aimed to understand why and how the children came inside and what motivates their journey through the process of reformation.
Some of the gaps to the effective reformation that we identified during this process were-
-Isolation
The system of reformation isolated children from the society they are supposed to go back to. This even though well-intended, proves difficult for children to deal with especially in the prime years of their lives. The period of isolation intended to reflect, but the lack of proper resources puts them in a very vulnerable spot inside.
-Social Norms
Due to the complicated and varied social structure of our society, a lot of children who come inside the Observation Homes have been normalized to situations, actions, and thinking which isn’t considered okay by the larger society. There is a difference in understanding of right and wrong and a lack of understanding of action and consequences.
-Misunderstood stakeholders
Lack of interest in the present process of reformation was observed during the visits to juvenile homes. Repeated questions from guards and teachers saw signs of disinterest such as; talking back, hesitation to answering questions, sarcastic or demeaning comebacks, and unwillingness to answer. This derails counseling sessions and fails to provide preferable results in a change in the behavior of the children.
Restorative Justice for collaborative action
A need for a more collaborative and relevant intervention was felt by the children and other key stakeholders such as the teachers and family members, to nudge behavior change. Through dialogue, workshops across stages and interactive sessions in the homes; the children presented perspectives that questioned the current view of reformation. The gap between what was given and what was aspired for presented a conflict.
Through creative methods and using Restorative Justice as a starting point, we aimed to bring stakeholders of the system and children offenders on the same page and communicate for a better system.
One of the most effective ways of addressing restorative justice is through restorative circles.
A Restorative Circle brings together different parties to a conflict — those who have acted, those directly impacted, and the wider community — within an intentional systemic context, to dialogue as equals.
One of the factors for children getting caught in unlawful activities was the ignorance of the law and social conduct, which was seen in children throughout irrespective of class or society.
Education as we know covers only an aspect of what children should be learning about today. Many aspects of learning focusing on developing skills, values, initiative, etc which play an essential role in the development of a person stay in the background or absent.
Restorative Circles aims to open up this discussion and make them see things from different perspectives and bring to the table the consequences and the picture. It aims to instill a sense of empathy, socio-emotional learning among the children, and work on how to control and express emotions.
Gamifying a Restorative Circle
A challenge that was seen to bring the concept of restorative circles to Observation Homes was a lack of trained facilitators to conduct one. The facilitator needs to be well versed in the method of conducting a restorative circle and also be able to handle any difficult situations that may arise while the circle is in session. It certainly may be difficult to train people to conduct circles, to learn the kind of empathy required to handle troubled children and listen to their problems without judgment. What is much harder is to convince people to put in the time and effort required to conduct a restorative circle.
A very important part of restorative justice is active participation by the juveniles who are part of the process. It was thus necessary to make sure children are motivated to take part in and drive the circle.
Thus the conclusion was reached that the juveniles needed to be the initiators and conductors of the circle themselves.
As a progression from drawing driven tools and, gamification was a method we tested with the children. Gamification is the method of applying aspects of games; like competition, point-scoring and rules of play; to non-related tasks. This can be used as a strategy to ensure participation. It brings in an element if play and uses mechanisms of achievement and rewards to encourage the participant.
It helped the children open up to us as outsiders and also helped to bring in a sense of friendliness within the larger group of children inside which made it easier to open up to each other. It created a sense of safe space for them and we hoped to tap into that further.
The first prototype of the toolkit to bring in a restorative circle was modeled on UNO cards. Each of the four colors of the deck had different types of questions — icebreaker activities, questions/ prompts to encourage understanding, reflection and resolution around a topic. The cards were eliminated by color and number and the children had to answer the question as they dealt the card.
This method provided a light-hearted and engaging way of bringing out difficult questions. Children were ready to tackle questions to win the game. The format of the game and tasks involved also piqued the interest of caretakers and guards inside and some of them participated in the discussion. This served as a major ice-breaker to otherwise difficult dynamics inside.
One thing we needed to address was the randomness of cards coming up due to game mechanics. This interrupted the flow of the discussion and thus, any serious learning from it. The subsequent prototypes were designed as a board game with a path to cross address the aspects of the issue along the way.
Insights through the process
- Activities that involved other participants were better received.
- Taboo surrounding card games as gambling games.
- There was a need for a positive incentive to complete a task, go through with answering the question.
- Need for a narrative-based structure rather than mechanism-based structure
- The involvement of adults proved to be beneficial as they were seen as equal players.
- Need to regulate the discussion and create a safe space for everyone to participate.
- Participation coins ensured attention and participation from other interested players.
A Tool for Restorative Circle
ResQ is a 6 players board game in which each player completes their journey across the board while tackling some questions and tasks along the way.
Each game is based on a certain topic and the underlying aim of the game is to discuss the topic, the severity of the issue and methods to resolve it.
In the game, the board holds the counters of the players and dictates what card the child gets depending on the color of the piece on which the counter lands . It helps maintain the narrative from ice breaker activities to in-depth discussion to reflection and resolution.
The game consists of -
-Board with a path made of 3 colors referring to the color cards — blue, orange, red and boxes noted for cards to be placed
Theme cards to decide the topic of the day
-Cards : Blue are the activity cards, orange is the question cards and red is for resolution cards.
-Counters representing the player
-Talking stick — to regulate the conversation
-Instruction card — for the facilitator of the game
-Coins for Points: 2 for participation, 1 for answering your turn
-Dice — for movement
-Vote cards: Thumbs up/down card for each player
The game starts with the facilitator or the group collectively picking a theme card and placing it in the center box. Themes include topics like anger, empathy, violence, robbery, sexual abuse, etc. ResQ allows for the flexibility of making new theme cards or choosing an issue particular to the group to address.
The first player rolls the dice and moves his/her counter accordingly. On the board, the first half of the circle ring has mostly activity card colors(blue) in the tiles, the middle part had question card colors(orange) and the last part had resolution card colors(red). The child has to pick up the color of the card to match the color of the tile on which the dice had landed and complete the task associated with it or answer the question associated with it.
On completion of one person’s turn, there will be a vote by all the players, if everyone agrees that it was a good attempt, he would get a token worth 1 point.
Participation is encouraged in the game to bring new perspectives to the table. If a player offers to do the task on somebody else’s card or with somebody else, he/she would get a participation token of 2 points. Participation coins ensure attention and participation from other interested players. To make sure everyone gets a chance to talk, a talking stick is introduced. Anyone who holds the stick talks and those who wish to contribute ask for the talking stick. In the end, the child with the most amounts of points wins the game.
Testing Res Q with children
The final version of the game was tested in an Observation Home in Ahmedabad. When the game was introduced to the juvenile home, it garnered a mixed response. Just like any other game, a sense of competition took over soon, and the biggest challenge was to make the children curate the content of the conversations the game starts.
Once the game was in motion active participation was seen in all the physical tasks. Slowly as the game proceeded, children played the game for the conversations rather than simply to gain points. Especially for children who had recently joined the juvenile home, it not only made them open about what they felt but also helped create a bond with the other children as they could relate to the emotions. During these conversations, the children showed regret over their actions and the consequences their parents were facing.
The officials also showed interest in being part of the game, and promote conversation. While this was an emotional and thoughtful journey for the children playing, it gave many valuable insights to the counselor who had not been told about this by the children before. This gave them insights to change or improve the action plan for the child’s reformation. The balance of the fun playful activities and serious nudges was much appreciated by the officials and the children.
