Opening the afternoon programming of the VII Seminar on Public Policies for the Adequate Treatment of Conflicts and the 8th Meeting of the Judicial Centers for Conflict Resolution (Cejuscs), Judge Lilia Simone Rodrigues da Costa Vieira, from the Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories (TJDFT), spoke about "Restorative Justice applied to the Special Criminal Courts: the experience of the TJDFT".
At the beginning of the panel, Judge Luciana Aglantzakis, coordinator of the Cejusc Polo of the District of Pedro Afonso, explained that restorative justice "is the delivery of a conflict to the judiciary by the parties, and this conflict will be re-signified and restored, as it will be resolved with the contribution of those involved, in which emotion, respect, dignity, unity, understanding are prioritized, and not just reason in the law".
In her speech, she highlighted how the work of restorative justice in the State of Tocantins has shown positive effects in the judiciary. "We have been using restorative justice techniques, in peace-building circles, in schools in the District of Pedro Afonso, with the aim of creating healthy emotional bonds between young people and adolescents, and preventing or resolving conflicts, avoiding violence," she commented.
A Judge for 20 years, Lilia Simone shared an important testimony about her contact with restorative justice. "At a certain point in my career, I found myself reproducing actions that I had criticized so much before. It's as if you get into a machine and you're a part that starts to work according to that machine. I started to think about what change I was causing with my actions as a magistrate. I realized that I wasn't causing the change I wanted to cause (...) This anguish overwhelmed me and I found restorative justice at an impossible and difficult time too," she said.
With regard to the challenges in promoting restorative activities, the Judge pointed out that raising awareness among colleagues and members of the judiciary is a point to be worked on. During her presentation, Lilia Simone conceptualized restorative justice as something that seeks to deal with situations of violence and conflict from a new paradigm, different from the punitive one.
"I always start this speech by saying that it's difficult to define restorative justice, because any definition we seek is going to be limiting. This is another challenge for those who don't know about restorative justice. Those of us in the legal profession want to fit things into a particular place, but restorative justice doesn't fit. It is everywhere and it is not limited to one specific place. Limiting it conceptually loses a lot of what restorative justice is," she explained.
Judge Jurema Carolina da Silva Gomes, of the Court of Justice of the State of Paraná (TJPR), who spoke about "Consensuality in structural processes for implementing public policies", began her lecture by explaining that "the structural process is a new strategy for dealing with conflict, because it recognizes the complexity of the problem. Thus, it dialogues not only with the procedural actors, not only with the parties involved in the process, but also with the state bureaucracy and with social actors who, in some way, can collaborate in solving this problem".
Judge Wellington Magalhães, coordinator of the Judicial Center for Environmental and Land Conflict Solutions (Cejuscaf), was the coordinator of the panel.
Taught by Lawyer and judicial mediator Luciana Drimel Dias and coordinated by Lawyer, accredited mediator for the Judiciary and President of the Alternative Means of Conflict Resolution Commission of the BAR, Indira Matos, the last lecture focused on the Judiciary and the Legal Profession in perspective and in the light of the North American experience: "Strategic alternatives to rationalize the Administration of Justice through the use of ADRs (Alternative Dispute Resolutions)".
