“ The young boy was sitting across the table from me, and he seemed to be a kind of shapeshifter vacillating between willingness and reluctance. I and another volunteer were talking with the young man and his mother at a local library in as part of Restorative Justice Louisville, or RJL. This was a first step toward, hopefully, keeping him out of the court system. For that to happen, however, the young boy needed to accept responsibility for his actions and agree to make amends for the harm he had caused.”