Building Sociedades Más Justas: Youth Justice in Colombia

Claire de Mézerville López and cohost IIRP Lecturer A. Miguel Tello welcome Lina Hernández Nassif to the Restorative Works! Podcast.  Lina brings a wealth of experience from her work implementing restorative justice programs, particularly with youth in Colombia. Her journey spans from coordinating conflict resolution programs in prisons to facilitating initiatives for vulnerable teenagers across diverse socio-cultural contexts. In this compelling conversation, Lina shares pivotal outcomes from her programs, emphasizing the crucial role of victims in the restorative justice process. By placing survivors at the heart of justice initiatives, Lina and her team create safe spaces where individuals can process trauma, find closure, and embark on paths to reconciliation. She highlights success stories of teenagers who, after engaging in restorative justice, have overcome adversity to pursue education, employment, and stable lives. Lina dispels myths about restorative justice, stressing its practical application beyond theory. She advocates for professionals to engage directly with communities, fostering understanding and support for youth facing complex challenges. Her insights challenge conventional punitive measures, advocating instead for collaborative efforts among institutions to maximize impact and promote societal healing. Lina has a wide range of experience implementing restorative justice processes. She coordinated programs focused on conflict resolution inside and outside prisons with adults. In recent years, her work has focused on caring for youth within the criminal responsibility system, specifically for teenagers from different socio-cultural contexts such as migrants, natives, LGBTIQ+ community, and more. In 2022, Lina had the opportunity to work for the World Food Program through the Corporation for Community Social Development in the registration of more than 60,000 Venezuelans in vulnerable conditions so they could have access to government benefits in the Antioquia territory. Recently, she has been in charge of the coordination of the judicial monetary program for drug treatment, which was developed in an agreement between the government of Antioquia and the prison fellowship of Colombia to develop restorative justice processes for teens who have committed crimes due to drug use and addiction. Tune in to learn more about Lina’s work and the expansiveness of the impact restorative justice can have on youth and their communities.