Dr. Marilyn Armour to Deliver Keynote on Restorative Justice at Symposium on Dispute Resolution, April 23

April 17, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas - Dr. Marilyn Armour, an associate professor of social work at The University of Texas at Austin, will deliver the keynote presentation on restorative justice at the Ninth Annual Spring Symposium on Dispute Resolution on Thursday, April 23. The symposium, hosted by the Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution at the University of Texas School of Law, will also feature six university graduate and law students presenting research on various dispute resolution topics.

Armour's presentation, "Restorative Justice: Putting a Spotlight on Harm and the Personal Dimensions of Crime," will discuss restorative justice as a social reform movement and as a means of dispute resolution. Armour will address the fast rise in the development of this approach, what the results show about restorative justice practices, and how restorative justice is widening the circle by applying its principles to a variety of social issues, including family violence, school misconduct, and interethnic conflict.

Dr. Marilyn Armour

Armour is the director of the Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue, a unit of the Center for Social Work Research, School of Social Work. Restorative justice is a fast-growing state, national and international social movement and set of practices that aims to redirect society's retributive response to crime. Restorative justice seeks to elevate the role of crime victims and community members; hold offenders directly accountable to the people they have violated; and restore, to the extent possible, the emotional and material losses of victims by providing a range of opportunities for dialogue, negotiation, and problem solving.

The Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue seeks to build a national mindset that embraces restorative justice principles. Its mission is to advance meaningful accountability, victim healing and community safety through the use of restorative solutions to repair the harm related to conflict, crime and victimization.

Armour has written numerous articles and book chapters, including "The Ultimate Penal Sanction and 'Closure' for Survivors of Homicide Victims," coauthored with Mark Umbreit, which appeared recently in the Marquette Law Review. She and Umbreit are also coauthors of the forthcoming book "Restorative Justice Dialogues: A Research-Based Approach to Working with Victims, Offenders, Families, and Communities." As a researcher, Armour has focused on the effectiveness of restorative justice interventions, clinical interventions for survivors of homicide victims, survivorship in Holocaust survivors, and the impact of the ultimate penal sanction on survivors in Texas and Minnesota. In addition to the keynote presentation, the symposium will feature panelists Ronnie Earle, former district attorney for Travis County; John Sage, of Bridges to Life; and Mark Odom, of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The public is invited to attend all symposium presentations.

The symposium culminates the ninth year of the interdisciplinary Graduate Portfolio Program in Dispute Resolution. Through this Portfolio Program, law and graduate students from ten different academic units at The University of Texas at Austin pursue a focused curriculum of theory, skills, and research on dispute resolution.

From 8:55 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. and from 1:20 p.m. to 4:10 p.m., graduate students from the School of Social Work, LBJ School of Public Affairs, and the School of Law will present their research on topics including arbitration in family law, mandatory domestic violence assessments in suits for dissolution of marriage in Texas, small state mediation, and the role of mediation in social work. Student presentations will be in the Eidman Courtroom and the public is invited to attend.

The Spring Symposium on Dispute Resolution is sponsored by the Construction Law and the Alternative Dispute Resolution sections of the State Bar of Texas.

For more information, contact:
Mary Gaski
Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution
(512) 471-3507