One of the many SLUH seniors hard at work on his Grande Project earlier this month was Alec Martirez, who spent his month looking into the topic of restorative justice, and addressing it in a letter to Missouri Congresswoman Ann Wagner.

“There's a lot that goes into (restorative justice),” said Martirez. “It's a very complicated thing, but it kind of boils down to a measure of viewing crime as more than just breaking a law, but also looking at the harm it does between the offender and the victim.”

Part of Martirez’s research focused on conversations between offenders and victims in an attempt to resolve their issues.

“A very common thing with restorative justice is these circles where you have an offender who's speaking with the actual victim of their crime,” said Martirez. “They talk about it and they try to reach a resolution. It’s a healing process.”

Martirez decided on his topic during one of the seniors’ first Grande Project meetings, when they were shown a slideshow with various potential topic ideas. Two of the topics caught his eye: criminal justice and racial justice. Martirez felt so greatly about both of the topics that he wanted to combine these topics together rather than focus on just one of them.

“I wasn't sure how I could combine the two,” said Martirez, “so I looked into restorative justice more and (realized) that I could probably connect (criminal justice and racial justice) within the topic of restorative justice.”

The format for Martirez’s project, a letter to a Missouri politician, posed some unique challenges. 

“A letter to an elected official has to be very short,” said Martirez. “They usually have to be like one page. So trying to fit everything in is a much different process from doing a podcast or video. (It is tough) because you have to fit all of this stuff and all of this advocacy within just one page.”

Martirez also shared a few resources that he used for his project that he would recommend to anyone interested in the topic of restorative justice, ranging from online sources to a movie called The Prison.