Alfred Blumstein is a criminologist at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Winner of the 2007 Stockholm Prize in criminology, he is an expert on prison populations, juvenile violence and crime deterrence.

The Pennsylvania Prison Society has been working for more than 200 years on behalf of people in jail and their families. It has a restorative justice program. William M. DiMascio is the executive director.

The New York State Community Justice Forum in Rensselaer, N.Y., provides training and assistance in community and restorative justice. The difference: Community justice works to prevent crime and promote community, while restorative justice works for reparation after a crime has been committed.

The Restorative Justice Project of the Midcoast in Belfast, Maine, has worked with victims and offenders to seek apologies for victims and to help criminals turn their lives around.

Patricia Raybon, a professor emeritus in journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love and Forgiveness (Penguin, 1997) and I Told the Mountain to Move (Tyndale House, 2005). She writes often about religion, family and race

The international Victim Offender Mediation Association in St. Paul, Minn., promotes restorative justice. The 250-member association has members from all states.

Howard Zehr is one of the founders of the restorative justice movement. He teaches at Eastern Mennonite University, where he co-directs the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. He speaks and consults extensively on the subject. Among his many publications on the subject is the best-selling The Little Book of Restorative Justice.

Ted Wachtel is founder and president of the International Institute for Restorative Practices in Bethlehem, Pa., which offers graduate degrees and training in applying restorative principles in schools, criminal justice, child welfare and workplaces. Read “In Pursuit of Paradigm: A Theory of Restorative Justice,” a paper delivered by Wachtel and researcher Paul McCold at an international criminology conference in […]

Mark Umbreit is founding director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota school of social work. He is also on the faculty of the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the university. Umbreit is familiar with evaluations of restorative justice.