Punishment Culture Does Not Work

by Jeffrey Benson

author of Hacking School Discipline Together

The culture of punishing students who misbehave—shaming, excluding, intimidating, threatening, detaining, suspending, and expelling them by the thousands—has had a long history but little evidence for supporting student’s skills and moral development.

We have punished, hoping that causing students to feel pain will convince them to rein in their behavior—but punishment and pain are not a curriculum and guarantee nothing. 

Without an organized tool kit of alternatives to punishment, we’ve accepted its limitations ... because we have to do something when students misbehave. Punishments, if nothing else, make a statement.

Yet many educators have wished for decades that we could do better.

Now we can, through the implementation of restorative justice (RJ, also called restorative discipline). RJ has been demonstrated in classrooms and schools across the country where, according to the Learning Policy Institute, “21 states and the District of Columbia have enacted legislation supporting use of RJ in schools. Studies indicate that school-based RJ improves school climate and connectedness, promotes student health and well-being, lowers rates of discipline, and reduces racial disparities in school discipline.”

Restorative discipline practices support better relationships among the adults in schools.

And still there is resistance to RJ. What I have learned from helping schools to organize and implement RJ practices, is that there is a misconception that must be addressed before many educators will take the risk to give up the tools of punishment: the misconception is that RJ does not hold students accountable, but merely excuses students for their misbehavior, returning them to class to create an even more chaotic and unsafe learning environment for all.

The Truth is Quite the Opposite! 

The culture of punishment; e.g. sending students to detention, or suspending them for a couple of days, is an illusion of accountability. The misbehaving students merely “do time;” exclusion from the classroom or school is not a curriculum for accountability. 

Many students who have been punished come to the conclusion that their biggest mistake was getting caught. They don’t return to school and classes better equipped to handle the demands that triggered their misbehavior, or feeling more related to the adults. They return, too often having learned a painful lesson: they can handle the punishment.

Punishment is an Illusion of Accountability

True accountability—restorative justice—happens only in direct relationship to the community of peers and adults in schools and classes. The foundations of RJ, adapted to the particular needs and resources of schools, include:

• All concerning behaviors will be addressed—no one “gets away” with breaking school rules. 
• Students repair the harm they have caused, in whatever manner that can be arranged. Repairing the harm is the DNA of restorative practices and most explicitly separates RJ from the culture of punishment.
• Through repairing the harm they have caused, whether to people or property, students can earn forgiveness, one of the most powerful binding forces for healing communities. 
• By taking actions to earn forgiveness, the students themselves are healed: they have evened the score, they have demonstrated their capacity to do good. Their peers experience them differently than if they had simply been excluded.

• Through repairing the harm, students are drawn toward the heart of the school community, rather than pushed to its perimeter by the punishments of exclusion. When struggling students drop out of school, either cognitively or physically, it is not an event but the last step of a process that has been brewing for years, a process rooted in not feeling they belong to the school community. RJ practices interrupt the process of alienation born of punishments.  
• Through meaningful apologies, dialogues, and repairing the harm, RJ provides a means for misbehaving students and their teachers to forge better relationships, an essential element for students to be more engaged in the hard work of learning.
• With the support of adults, students learn coping strategies to handle the pressures that triggered their prior misbehavior. RJ gives the misbehaving students essential skills for a lifetime of being in communities and reaffirms that schools are centers of teaching, not punishment.
• The peers of the misbehaving student, who have often been witnesses to the misbehavior, know that the returning student has needed to fulfill commitments to the community before being back in class. They are safer. They have also witnessed adults being compassionate while upholding school standards, which is a lesson in how to build an orderly and inclusive community.
• Restorative discipline practices support better relationships among the adults in schools. In the absence of RJ, discipline issues can tear apart a school staff: some want to impose still-harsher punishments in the face of ineffective prior punishments. Others want to protect students from those who will punish more and more. As staff work together through the frameworks of RJ–helping students to repair the harm, learn new skills, and bend their moral compass towards membership in the school community–staff become united in a common purpose, in ways that the culture of punishment has never provided.

Getting Started with RJ

There is a phrase from the world of therapists as they help new clients find a way to begin exploring their concerns: there are many ladders into the pool. The same holds true for RJ. Some schools start by getting training on restorative circles.

Others may first list the misbehaviors that demand administrative involvement. Many schools begin by developing a toolkit of effective, non-punitive adult responses to student misbehaviors.

Restorative practices do not mean that students will never misbehave again–only that each incident of misbehavior is an opportunity to improve outcomes.

I want to suggest another starting activity, whether you are a classroom teacher on your own incorporating RJ or you're a school leader seeking to change the entire school culture to one of restoration: identify the specific concerns your school setting has inherited from the culture of punishment that can be addressed through RJ.

Research, theory, expert opinions, and statistics about the benefits of RJ are good talking points; much more buy-in from students, parents, staff and community stakeholders can be achieved by citing the benefit to your class, your school and your district through RJ right now. For instance:

• You have students who are not responding to being punished, instead only receiving increasingly harsher punishments
• You have students from one group who are more often yoked with harsher punishments than their peers
• Students who are sent to detention or suspension are falling farther behind academically
• There are times and places during the day when your students are consistently misbehaving
• Parents are complaining that punishments are not helping their child succeed or are unfairly meted out
• There have been conflicts among the staff, or between staff and administration, regarding the morals and efficacy of your discipline policy
• Your dropout rate is unacceptably high and higher than similar schools or districts

Restorative practices do not mean that students will never misbehave again–only that each incident of misbehavior is an opportunity to improve outcomes.

The prevailing culture of punishments has instead promoted the alienation of students and families, students falling behind in their studies, harms unhealed, conflicts among the adults, and a strong contribution to the school-to-prison pipeline (Leung-Gagne, et. al, 2022).

We can do better; schools around the country are already doing better. RJ is no longer a wish among those who have seen the problems with the culture of punishment.

Restorative justice is working.

About the Author

Jeffrey Benson is a veteran educator, consultant, and author. His most recent book is Hacking School Discipline Together. Learn more about the author at JeffreyBenson.org.

Resources

• Leung-Gagne, Melanie, Jennifer McCombs, Caitlin Scott, and Daniel Losen. “Pushed Out: Trends and Disparities in Out-of-School Suspension.” Learning Policy Institute. September 30, 2022. 
• “School-Based Restorative Justice: State-By-State Analysis.” Center for Gender Justice & Opportunity. May 12, 2024. 
• ‌Main image Monstera Production from Pexels.
• Image of smiling boy by AkshayaPatra Foundation from Pixabay.