Restorative Justice Coordinator

Most days tend to involve intake of cases, victim and offender preparation, scheduling of dialogue sessions, facilitating restorative conferences, and coordinating with referring agencies (courts, schools, community groups). You'll often handle case management in the morning, conduct preparation meetings with participants in the afternoon, and run conferences as scheduled.

The hardest parts tend to be the emotional weight of the work and the unevenness of program funding and institutional support. Conversations between victims and offenders carry real intensity, and outcomes depend heavily on preparation. Settings vary — court-annexed diversion programs, school-based restorative practices, juvenile-justice programs, and community organizations each operate with different funding stability and theories of change.

People who tend to thrive here are patient listeners, comfortable in emotionally charged conversations, grounded in the belief that accountability and healing can coexist, and able to work across institutional contexts. If you want clear adversarial structure or court-style certainty, restorative work can feel ambiguous. If you find meaning in creating space for harm to be repaired rather than just punished, the work can be deeply purposeful.