bspin Eric Butler, 49, Dies; Promoted ‘Restorative Justice’ for Young People

Eric Butlerbspin, an anti-violence counselor with a gift for winning the trust of emotionally closed-off teenagers, who worked with students, school districts and prosecutors’ offices to divert young people from being sucked into the criminal justice system, died on Aug. 4 at his home in New Orleans. He was 49.

The cause is unknown, according to his sister Najla Butler, who said the death was being investigated by the Orleans Parish coroner’s office. She said that Mr. Butler had suffered for much of his life from seizures, which he had attributed to stress.

Mr. Butler’s work, beginning with street gangs in Oakland, Calif., and extending to a last-chance high school in that city for students who had been expelled from other schools, first gained attention through articles in 2013 in The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor and a 2017 documentary film, “Circles.”

The exposure brought him a reputation in the field of restorative justice in education, which is an alternative to “zero tolerance” policies, such as suspension and expulsion, which in many school districts are meted out far more often to Black students than white students. Suspension can be an early step on a school-to-prison pipeline.

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Rather than punish students, restorative justice seeks to have bad actors accept responsibility for their wrongdoing, to develop empathy, and to commit meaningful reparations that will make the victim feel healed.

Mr. Butler led “talking circles” in which young people who had harmed one another were encouraged to own up to what they had done.

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