WK 1 Journal: Your Views on Restorative Justice

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I n the United States, the criminal justice system is undergirded by a thirty-year era of “get tough” policies that have bred high rates of recidivism, a focus on punishing lawbreaking rather than attending to the harm experienced by crime victims, and

ever-increasing expenditures that exceed amounts spent on education and health in some states’ budgets.

Under the current system, over 6.7 million adults or 3.1 percent of the adult population is behind bars, on probation, or on parole. Research shows that incarceration—instead of curbing crime—makes nonviolent offenders into violent criminals and is a revolving door in and out of prison. Yet we continue to spend over $52 billion a year on corrections. The overuse of prison and extended probation casts a long shadow that devastates families and communities throughout the country. For example, African American men are imprisoned at six times the rate for whites. This disproportionality severs offenders from their children, who become the hidden or forgotten victims of crime today and are too often the newly incarcerated tomorrow. Our criminal justice system also burdens many ex-offenders with a felony record, which robs

them of employment and leads many into homelessness, vagrancy, and future criminal behavior, in addition to robbing the state of possible income tax revenues.

This is an out-of-control system that is fed, ominously, by students who are referred to alternative education programs. In Texas alone, the 100,000 students referred to such programs annually are five times more likely to drop out than their peers in mainstream schools, making them probable candidates for the school to prison pipeline. Roughly 80 percent of prison inmates never finished high school.

As a society, we are in desperate need of a different approach to the problems created by crime and social injustice—an approach that puts energy into the future, not the past, an approach that begins with who has been hurt and what their needs may be, and finishes with giving wrongdoers a way back instead of guaranteeing them a lifetime of hardship.

What restorative Justice offers Restorative justice is a fast-growing state, national, and international social movement and set of practices that aim to redirect society’s retributive response to crime. Restorative

Restorative Justice:

Some Facts and History by Marilyn Armour

Marilyn Armour, Ph.D., directs the Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue at the University of Texas at Austin, School of Social Work, and is coauthor with Mark Umbreit of Restorative Justice Dialogue: An Essential Guide for Research and Practice (2010).e va

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The number of people incarcerated, on parole, and on probation in the United States roughly equals the populations of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston combined. And then there’s that extralegal prison at Guantánamo.

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justice views crime not as a depersonalized breaking of the law but as a wrong against another person. It attends to the broken relationships between three players: the offender, the victim, and the community. Accordingly, restorative justice seeks to elevate the role of crime victims and community members; hold offenders directly accountable to the people they have harmed; and restore, to the extent possible, the emotional and material losses of victims by providing a range of opportunities for dialogue, negotiation, and problem solving. Moreover it views criminal acts more comprehensively than our judicial system because it recognizes how offenders harm victims, communities, and even themselves by their actions.

The ultimate aim of restorative justice is one of healing. If survivors of crimes receive appropriate emotional and material reparation, the harm can be redressed; by seeking to repair the damage caused, the offender can be reconciled with the victim and reintegrated back into his or her social and familial networks; and through such reconciliation and reintegration, community harmony has a chance to be restored. This manner of healing gives the actual victims and the community, as well as the offenders, the opportunity to take an active part in the justice process instead of a traditionally passive role.

History and Development of the restorative Justice Movement Restorative justice is a young field that emerged during the 1970s as alternative approaches to the court process, such as alternative dispute resolution, were becoming a national trend. It emerged alongside the victims’ rights movement, which argued for greater involvement of crime victims in the criminal justice process, as well as for the use of restitution as compensation for losses. Although many of the values, principles, and practices of restorative justice hearken back to indigenous cultures, a 1974 case in Kitchener, Ontario, is considered the beginning point of today’s restorative justice movement. This “Kitchener experiment” required two teenagers to meet with and pay restitution to every one of the twenty-two people whose property they had vandalized.

From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, a number of experimental programs, modeled after the Kitchener program, were initiated in several jurisdictions in North America and Europe. These initiatives, however, remained small in size and number, having little impact on the larger system. In 1994, restorative justice took a giant step toward becoming mainstream when the American Bar Association endorsed victim-offender mediation, a program usually associated with first-time offenders and minor crimes. Additional

support came from the National Organization for Victim Assistance, which published a monograph entitled Restorative Community Justice: A Call to Action, and from the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the European Union,

all of which have committed to promote restorative practices. Today, thirty states either have restorative justice principles in their mission statements and policy plans or legislation promoting a more balanced and restorative juvenile justice system. This institutionalization is further buttressed by the American Bar Association, which began offering grants in 2008 to develop restorative justice initiatives in criminal law settings.

Core restorative Justice Practices The most widely used approaches in restorative j u s t i c e a r e v i c t i m - o f f e n d e r m e d i a t i o n , f a m i l y g r o u p conferencing, circles, and victim-offender dialogue. All put victims and offenders in direct dialogue, nearly always face- to-face, about a specific offense or infraction. They also have in common the presence of at least one more person who serves as the facilitator, and they usually involve advance preparation of the parties so they will know what to expect. The focus of the encounter most frequently involves naming what happened, identifying its impact, and coming to some common understanding, often including reaching agreement as to how any resultant harm will be repaired. These practices are also used in non–criminal justice settings such as schools or neighborhoods.

Victim-offender mediation is the oldest practice and is typically used with victims and offenders of property crimes and minor assaults. Participants include the victim, offender, and facilitator. The face-to-face meeting is centrally focused on the victim and the offender, accompanied by a small number of support persons (such as parents or friends).

Family group conferencing originated in New Zealand as a means of diverting young offenders from formal adjudication. It routinely involves support persons for both victims and offenders, as well as additional participants from the community. This approach emphasizes supporting offenders in taking responsibility for their actions and in changing their behaviors. Thus, the involvement of the offender’s family and other support persons is critical to this approach; the offender’s community of care helps build understanding and provides the opportunity for the offender to shift back from the role of offender to that of community member.

Circles are variously called “peacemaking circles,” “repair of harm circles,” and “sentencing circles.” The numbers and types of participants are similar to those gathered for conferencing but include wider community member participation, either as interested persons, representatives of the criminal justice system, or as additional circle keepers or facilitators. Circles are more focused on the harm done to the community than the other approaches. Circles also serve to build community. Circles feature shared leadership and consensus-based decision making as core to the functioning of the group and the development of the group’s process.

Victim-offender dialogue is an outgrowth of victim-offender mediation. It is used in crimes of severe (continued on page 64)

Recommended ResouRces

restorativejustice.org

iirp.edu

emu.edu/cjp/restorative-justice cehd.umn.edu/ssw/rjp

irjrd.org

F u t u r e o F w o r l d r e l i g i o n / j a i l w a l l s / s o m e F a c t s a n d h i s t o r y

cultivation is meditation, social engage- ment, conscious parenting, entheogenic shamanism, or communion with nature. (Of course, it may be desirable to comple- ment each pathway with practices that cultivate other human potentials.) The new spiritual bottom line, in contrast, will be the degree into which each spiri- tual path fosters both an overcoming of self-centeredness and a fully embodied integration that make us not only more sensitive to the needs of others, nature, and the world, but also more effective agents of cultural and planetary trans- formation in whatever contexts and measure life or spirit calls us to work.

The affirmation of our shared spiritual family naturally calls for the articulation of a common—nonabsolutist and contex- tually sensitive—global ethics. This global ethics, however, cannot arise exclusively out of our highly ambiguous moral reli- gious past, but needs to be crafted in the tapestry of contemporary interfaith in- teractions, comparative religious ethics, cross-cultural dialogue on global human rights, and cooperative spiritual inquiry. In other words, it is likely that any viable future global ethics will be grounded not only in our spiritual history, but also in our critical reflection on such history in the context of our present-day moral intuitions (for example, about the pit- falls of religious dogmatism, fanaticism, narcissism, and dissociation). Besides its obvious relevance for regulating cross- cultural and interreligious conflicts, the adoption of global guidelines—including guidelines for dealing with disagree- ment—seems crucial to address some of the most challenging issues of our global village, such as the exploitation of women and children, the increasing polariza- tion of rich and poor, the environmental crisis, xenophobic responses to cultural and ethnic diversity, and unfairness in international business.

Let me draw this essay to a close with the following: situated at the creative nexus between the mystery’s genera- tive power and our own psycho-cultural dispositions, spiritually individuated persons might become unique embodi- ments of the mystery, capable of co- creating novel spiritual understandings,

practices, and even expanded states of freedom. If we accept this approach, it is plausible to conjecture that our re- ligious future may bear witness to a greater-than-ever plurality of visionary and existential developments grounded in a deeply felt sense of spiritual unity. Such spiritual unity, however, may not be found in the heavens (i.e., in men- tal, visionary, or even mystical visions) but deep down into the earth (i.e., in o u r e m b o d i e d c r e a t i v e c o n n e c t i o n with our shared roots). This account would be consistent with a view of the mystery, the cosmos, and/or spirit as moving from a primordial state of undif- ferentiated unity toward one of infinite differentiation-in-communion.

If you let me wear my visionary hat just a bit longer, I would say that the fu- ture of world religion will be shaped by spiritually individuated persons engaged in processes of cosmological hybridiza- tion in the context of a common spiri- tual family that honors a global order of respect and civility. This is the scenario I would personally like to see emerging in the world and that I am committed to help actualize. n

“There’s no way I would have—based on these facts and circumstances—agreed to a sentence this lenient had they not asked me and sincerely expressed to me how important it was to them to allow them to heal.”

The morning after the conference, Julie McBride said that there were times when it felt as if the cinderblock walls in that tiny room would crack from all the sorrow and heartache that poured forth in our five-hour meeting. Looking back, I think those jail walls did crack, not from the sorrow and heartache, but from the honesty, bravery, and willingness to try something our criminal justice system rarely sees: including victims in decid- ing what happens to the people who did them unthinkable harm, and a chance for their wrongdoers to begin to try to re- pair the irreparable before the case ever reaches the courthouse doors. n

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violence, such as murder, vehicular homicide, or serious felony assault. It is strictly victim-initiated, not stipulated by the court, and occurs post-conviction and usually during incarceration. It involves a lengthy period of preparation for both victims and offenders and requires experienced facilitators.

Emerging Areas of Practice An increasing number of hybrid or modified practices are developing in response to specific social issues. Circles are being used in prisons, for example, to bring together surrogate or unrela- ted victims and offenders for dialogue. Family group conferencing is being integrated into the child welfare system to give families more power and control over developing permanency plans for children who are in or at risk of enter- ing foster care due to parental abuse or neglect. Adaptations in core approaches also allow restorative justice to be used experimentally for seemingly intractable problems such as domestic violence. Although controversial because of con- cerns about the victim’s ongoing safety, a number of new programs are using

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Kate began by saying no less than five years, and no more than fifteen. Andy said ten to fifteen, and the McBrides also suggested ten years. The Grosmaires preferred probation time over a longer sentence, with the terms of probation in- cluding public service. Conor declined to comment, saying that his fate was in the hands of those around him. The prosecu- tor did not feel at liberty to agree to any- thing that day but said that he had heard and understood what everyone was sug- gesting. A few weeks later he came back with an offer for twenty years, and in- cluded the anger management, speaking in high schools, and other ideas for re- pair in the terms of probation that would follow Conor’s incarceration. Although it was more time than the Grosmaires had wanted, it was far less than the prosecu- tor would have offered in another case. As he said in a recent newspaper article,

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s o m e F a c t s a n d h i s t o r y / c o n t r o v e r s i e s

relationships. By honoring the healing power of story; teaching us to listen deeply to the woundedness within others and ourselves; and working with the energy of conflict and people’s intense emotions, restorative practices can transform pain into hope. n

one-third fewer post-traumatic stress symptoms at six weeks among victims involved in restorative justice practices than among victims in the control group, and 40 percent fewer symptoms at six months.

Victim-offender dialogue in crimes of severe violence also shows substantial results. An ethnographic study found that 80 percent of participants reported that the dialogue process had a profound effect on their lives. Important factors for victims included letting go of hate; obtaining answers to questions such as “Why did you did this to me?”; placing the anger where it belongs; and experiencing an offender’s ownership and remorse. Important factors for offenders included being accountable, seeing their victim as a human being, understanding the effects of their actions, being able to give something back, and being more open to their own feelings.

The effectiveness of circles has prin- cipally been evaluated in schools. In Minnesota, almost half of the school d i s t r i c t s u s e s o m e f o r m o f r e s t o r - ative practices, including circles. The number of acts of physical aggression recorded per year in one Minnesota ele- mentary school dropped from 773 to 153 over 3.5 years of application. Circles are also being used for offender re-entry. Research on circles of support and ac- countability for high-risk sex offenders in Canada showed that sexual reoffend- ing decreased by 83 percent for offend- ers engaged in restorative justice circles in contrast to the matched comparison group and actuarial projections. The dramatic results of these studies are be- ginning to turn heads in mainstream so- ciety. With all hope, future studies will continue to document the effectiveness of restorative justice methods in making our communities safer and more well.

Restorative justice has come to the fore globally at a time when many are realizing the systemic failures of the dominant model of crime control. By calling on those who are harmed, wrongdoers, and their affected communities to share the responsibility of responding to violence, restorative justice promotes repair, reconciliation, and the rebuilding of

modified restorative justice processes for domestic violence and reporting positive results.

Similarly, restorative justice pro- grams are being used experimentally for social reform such as defense-initiated victim outreach in capital murder cases, an outreach initiative that gives survivors of crime and the defense team access to each other for the purpose of meeting those survivors’ needs. Although con- tested because of legal considerations, careful and sensitive application of re- storative justice principles has advanced this sort of outreach as a viable practice at both federal and state levels.

Contextually oriented variations on victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, circles, and victim- offender dialogue will likely become the restorative justice norm. Movement away from a purist model, however, has, in some instances, made restorative justice programs difficult to identify. Indeed, much gets named restorative justice today that wanders far from its basic core values.

Evidence of Effectiveness Evaluations of victim-offender mediation and family group conferenc- ing are extensive and, in relationship to youth, these approaches have been examined over a longer period than most others in the juvenile justice system. The eighty-five studies and four meta- analyses that have been generated over the past thirty years show consistently high rates of participant satisfaction in a variety of sites, across many cultures, and in cases involving both mild and severe offenses.

Preventing recidivism is often used as a long-term measure of effective- ness. A recent meta-analysis of 12,000 juveniles found a 25 percent reduction in recidivism, leading the researchers to claim that victim-offender mediation is a well-established, empirically supported i n t e r v e n t i o n f o r r e d u c i n g j u v e n i l e recidivism. Victim-offender mediation and family group conferencing also affect the well-being of crime victims. A recent randomized and controlled trial of victims of robbery and burglary found

the service of a set of fears that serve neither love nor connection. To con- sciously serve love might be to infect public discourse with emotionality, spiri- tuality, and even religion, in something of a creeping revolution.

Radical Reactions to Restorative Justice Something that’s too revolutionary for many liberals should sound good to radical anti-racists and anti-capitalists. Yet, there is something highly distaste- ful, or suspect, about restorative justice for many radicals.

The greatest difficulty for the radical Left is implicit in Fania E. Davis’s words in this issue: “I would say this movement is more subversive than any of the revolutionary movements in which I have been involved since the 1950s. All previous social justice movements have kept us trapped in discordant, binary, either-or, right-wrong, and us-versus- them ways of being present to one another and to the earth.” Binaries are as central to the Left as they are to the Right. Many people have considered Right and Left to be equally self-righteous, equally prone to demonize the other side.

It’s not just that someone like Sunny Schwartz (page 37) works for the sheriff’s department and expresses a vision for how corrections can become a noble profession, which looks to many radicals

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