Who Is Restorative Justice Durham?

WHO IS RESTORATIVE JUSTICE DURHAM?

Restorative Justice Durham (RJ Durham) began in 2017 as a collaborative, volunteer-led effort to foster the transformative practice of restorative justice within our Durham community and the criminal legal system. RJ Durham is an initiative of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham (RCND), whose three decades of walking alongside homicide survivors and formerly incarcerated neighbors bears witness to harmful limitations of that legal system. Today our work rests in the diverse experience of our trained volunteer facilitators—people of many faiths and no particular faith—whose shared values guide everything we do.

How is RJ Durham led?

RJ Durham is committed to collaborative leadership that reflects and protects the RJ values that guide us. We ground all our work in non-hierarchical leadership circles that both shepherd the facilitation process and foster connection and partnership within RJ Durham and the broader Durham community.

Community Engagement Circle

Conferencing Circle

A thick border indicates the leadership team member is also a part of the Coordinating Circle

Marcia Owen

Marcia is a member of the Conferencing and Coordinating Circles.

Marcia is a life-long resident of Durham, a product of Durham Public Schools, and a graduate of Hillside High School and Duke University. In 1993, she joined the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham in response to the increasing danger, injuries, and deaths from gun violence in our city. Marcia retired as Executive Director of RCND in 2017 to support the development of Restorative Justice Durham and grow our community’s capacity to address the needs violence creates. She is currently a volunteer facilitator and conferencing circle member with Restorative Justice Durham, as well as co-chair of Durham’s Safety and Wellness Task Force—a two year pursuit between Durham County, City, and School Board to pursue alternatives to policing and the criminal legal system.

Amber Crispell

Amber is a member of the Conferencing Circle.

Amber has lived in Durham for 13 years and worked in Durham Public Schools for the past 12 years in varying capacities. While working in DPS and co-founding Jubilee Home, Amber saw the harm systems cause in both individuals and communities, as well as numerous opportunities for taking proactive steps in better directions. Her passion for RJ grew in that same space, and ten years of reading and exploration emerged into work as a volunteer facilitator with RJD and her current position as a Restorative Practice Coordinator with DPS. Amber is grateful to be part of a Durham community that wants to fully see and hear each other as we strive together for a more just world.

Joy Clark

Joy is a member of the Conferencing Circle.

Joy is a math teacher of almost 20 years who was recently named 2020–21 Teacher of the Year at Durham’s JD Clement Early College. She credits the use of restorative practices for this honor, and extends her passion for RJ into study as a (third-year evening) law student at North Carolina Central University. Joy was introduced to RJD by one of her favorite professors, and is excited about applying restorative principles and practices in closing the school-to-prison pipeline. She is currently evening liaison for the RJ student organization at NCCU Law, and a volunteer facilitator and conferencing circle member with Restorative Justice Durham.

Azmen Johnson

Azmen is a member of the Conferencing Circle.

Azmen Johnson grew up in Durham and graduated from UNC-Charlotte with an emphasis in sociology and criminal justice. A focus on juvenile justice steered her toward work on the front end of the school-to-prison-pipeline, where she now spends her days trying to alter that trajectory as an elementary instructional assistant with Durham Public Schools. Involvement with the local youth-focused nonprofit Urban Hope led Azmen to Restorative Justice Durham, where she’s served as a volunteer facilitator and now sits on RJD’s conferencing circle.

Tamario Howze

Tamario is a member of the Conferencing Circle.

Tamario “Mario” Howze is a Durham native, a licensed Baptist minister, and an ordained Elder within the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He holds both a master’s of divinity from Duke University and a master’s in industrial engineering from NC A&T University, and has worked extensively in each of these very different fields. Tamario is a member of Omega Psi Phi, a pastor at Jonesboro Chapel AME Zion church, and an active community servant and advocate who enjoys the work of uplifting and walking alongside neighbors who are vulnerable and marginalized. He lives in Durham with his soul mate Elizabeth, and is a volunteer facilitator and conferencing circle member with RJD.

Bobi Gallagher

Bobi is a member of the Community Engagement Circle.

Bobi Gallagher is a mother and grandmother with a background in group work and clinical social work. Since the 1960s, she has immersed herself in social justice efforts and experiencing the different cultures of places she's lived. As a facilitator and community engagement circle member with RJD, Bobi brings a love of people and a belief in love’s transformative power.

Elizabeth Hambourger

Elizabeth is a member of the Community Engagement Circle.

Elizabeth Hambourger came to restorative justice through her work as a lawyer defending people who have been sentenced to death. After a client described how his life was changed by participation in restorative justice circles, Elizabeth began attending RJD meetings in 2017 and joined its coordinating circle in 2019. She continues to find hope in restorative justice as a tool for addressing harm, beyond anything offered by a criminal punishment system that causes more harm than it heals.

Sandra Lassiter

Sandra is a member of the Community Engagement Circle.

Sandra first engaged RJD as a participant in monthly Community Circles, and quickly found deep connection with her work among justice-involved folks in Durham. Sandra works as a Certified Peer Support Specialist with the Welcome Home program, a City initiative that supports, advocates, and provides resources for neighbors transitioning back to Durham after incarceration. As a volunteer facilitator with RJD, Sandra has witnessed exciting second chances for hope, accountability, change, and healing among those on every side of harm. Alongside her role on RJD’s community engagement circle, Sandra connects to her community as an engaged PAC-1 participant and a provider of transitional housing.

Aviance Brown

Aviance is a member of the Community Engagement and Coordinating Circle.

Aviance Brown is a criminal defense and civil rights attorney in Durham. Her passion for restorative justice emerged in law school, while facing the inequities of the justice system as an intern in the public defender’s office. Fighting avidly for her clients in the courtroom, she experienced court as a factory production line where no one received true justice. RJD introduced her to an alternative means of resolving cases, with community accountability standing in for a punitive system that locks neighbors away and throws away the key. As a legal practitioner, RJ facilitator, and member of RJD’s community engagement circle, Aviance seeks to advocate and expand the community healing restorative justice makes possible.

Derrick Horton

Derrick is a member of the Community Engagement and Coordinating Circles.

Raised outside of the metropolitan DC area, Derrick has sought to weave reconciliation through the entire fabric of his life. He traces that commitment along a personal journey of reflection and leadership that began with service in the United States Army after high school graduation and continues in his current work as a pastor and community leader in Durham. His role on RJD’s community engagement circle has roots in time as a volunteer leader in the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham’s vigil ministry among victims of violence. All of this work affords Derrick a natural opportunity to expand on his lifelong personal mission: to end estrangement in human relationships, and offer opportunities for communal healing to all those seeking repair.

Leah Wilson-Hartgrove

Leah is a member of the Conferencing, Community Engagement, and Coordinating Circles.

Leah's journey in restorative justice began in 2005 with the Capital Restorative Justice Project, an effort to support and connect families who have a loved one sentenced to death and families who have had a loved one taken violently. That work and her relationships in Durham's Walltown community revealed both the harm caused by the criminal legal system and the need for better, more just ways into accountability and healing. As a volunteer facilitator, coordinating circle member, and RJD’s first staff Restorative Justice Coordinator, she’s been honored to help realize a collaborative local effort towards that alternative vision. Leah's RJD work takes root in her family life in the Rutba House community and house of hospitality in Walltown, where she is also a member of St. John's Missionary Baptist Church.

Louis D. Threatt

Louis is a member of the Community Engagement Circle.

A facilitator with RJ Durham, Louis Threatt teaches, studies, and ministers at the intersections of prisons, restorative justice, and practical theology. He has an M.Div (Duke Divinity School) and a DMin (Drew University), focusing on Prison Studies, Pastoral Care and Incarceration. Dr. Threatt is the founder and senior pastor with Cities of Refuge Christian Church, and Executive Director of the non-profit UR Restored Ministries, Inc. which are dedicated to serving those impacted by incarceration and at the margins of life.

Our RJ Durham community includes over 75 trained facilitators. These volunteers work together in Facilitation Teams of three members, and gather in monthly Circles that ground our RJ practice within restorative community.

What values drive RJ Durham?

Everything we do takes root in the essential values participants bring to our Circles, assuring that each Circle is shaped by the collective assets of all involved. Alongside these communal resources, RJ Durham also espouses four core values to serve as an anchor and foundation for our restorative work: respect, integrity, responsibility, and honesty.
Holding our values alongside the reality of life together, RJ Durham also recognizes that all our institutions and systems have been framed within persistent ideologies of oppression and dehumanization. As such, RJ Durham chooses to employ our communal values in pursuit of equitable systems of justice that center the voices of neighbors most harmed by the racial and social inequity pervading our criminal legal system. And we situate the ongoing work of individual and collective liberation as integral to the Covenant of Understanding that shapes our common life and practice.

Read our Covenant of Understanding