Good morning- -this is an combined effort to answer questions which appear to be coming from multiple voices in the community.
1) on the subject of research regarding recidivism and the overall effectiveness of restorative justice. 1) For a meta-analysis of work in North America http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/ps/rs/rep/meta-e.pdf 2) for a look at research related to re-offending primairly in other countries there are several sources at http://www.restorativejustice.org/rj3/Feature/July02/recidivism.htm
2) What is the role of lawyers from a professional point of view and how can the community expect to see a change in a paradigm of restorative justice? There is a growing movement within the legal community. We list several sources on our web site which detail a renaissance within the legal community. Some of the better of the better sources include: The International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers (based in Middlebury, Vermont) www.iahl.org The Renaissance Lawyer Society www.renaissnacelawyer.com and Group Peace at www.grouppeace.com Most of these sources focus on the professional but they are beginning to at least connect clients and communities who are working toward this new paradigm.
3) What do the politicians say about rj? First and most important is that CORRTJ itself does not endorse candidates for any office. Individuals may express choice, but as a collective body we do not. I can say that three local candidates have expressed varying degrees of interest. Two have been somewhat public (Rep. Gary Young and Mr. Duncan Palmatier). Truthfully we have not spent a lot of time with the statewide candidates, but reports coming from a neutral source indicate that Governor Kempthrone supports the principles of restorative justice. We are finding the same level of diversity on a national level and will demonstrate that in just a minute.
4) A question has been raised about the funding of the Balanced and Restorative Justice Program. As near as I can tell the authors want to know if it is a program of the federal government. The short answer is that yes the federal government is putting money into BARJ. However, for better or for worse it is not controlled by the federal government.
5) We've been asked to show examples of the level of diverse support rj
is receiving. I offer the list of co-sponsors who signed on for our
educational program last spring. Some we actively recruited, others simply
arrived: Friends Committee on Restorative
Justice: Renaissance Lawyer Society;
Restorative Justice Ministry Network;
Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation
Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of
Errants (CURE); Healing of Persons Exceptional
(HOPE) South Paris, Maine; Center for Restorative Justice
(Suffolk University: Boston, MA); International Alliance
of Holistic Lawyers (Middlebury, Vermont); Fundación
CEPPA Centro de Estudios para la Paz, (San José, Costa Rica);
Maine Council of Churches; AdvoCare Inc
(Virginia) .; Radical Education Community (California) ;
The Catherine Blount Foundation (Oregon);
Volunteers for the Care of Abused and Abandoned Children
(VOCAAC), Liberia; Cameroon Youths Movement from Non
Violence and Promotion of Culture; International Centre
for Justice and Reconciliation; State of Florida has
proclaimed Restorative Justice Week; Anarchist Black
Cross Austin, Texas Chapter (We do not agree with all, but support the
effort);North Coast Xpress; Virginia
Chapter of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants;
Triune Arts, Ontario, Canada; Interfaith
Coordinating Committee for Restorative Justice Policies (Floyd, Virginia);
Community Justice Reconciliation Program;
Center for Mediation and Negotiation on Revolutionary
Activity; Baptist Peace Fellowship;
Houston Animal Rights Team (believes no one should be in
a cage); Child of God, Child of Man(Kinshasa, Congo DR);
Santa Rosa, California City Council has proclaimed
Restorative Justice Week; Group Peace;
Anarchist Black Cross, Houston, Texas Chapter;
Holland and Associates (Memphis,
Tennessee); State of Maine has proclaimed
Restorative Justice Week.Some of these groups played an active role and
others really participate in name only.
5) What is the role of the faith communties in rj and who is actively doing the work? There is an excellent book called the Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice which details the origin of restorative justice from the perspectives of the major religions of the world. The book is available from State University of New York Press and the cost is something like $20. As I have said in the past this work belongs to all faiths and traditions. One of the more prolific writers on the subject is Father Jim Consedine, who can do a much better job than I can in terms of addressing the need for a restorative paradigm of justice.
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By Father Jim Consedine Sometimes I wonder whether as a culture we are not obsessed with street crime and its effects. The first television news broadcast I saw when I arrived in the United States commenced with four "street crime" crime stories. One was an arrest for murder, while the other three were stories of assaults. Only after reporting these events, did the newscast move on to the chaos in East Timor and the earthquake in Mexico. We need to reassess our understanding of crime and ask why it is that corporate crime and governmental crime advance virtually unhindered, while localized "street crime" has become so central to so many. The answer lies somewhere in the mixed realm of our own hidden fears and our sense of powerlessness in the face of crime, and the immense power of corporate vested interests who gain so much from the current situation, and who control so much of what we view and read. Corporate crime is endemic the world over. It hits us in so many ways from the added on costs in our supermarkets to the pollutants in the air we breathe, from the hidden cost of our banking and financial systems to the costs of medicines we take for our illnesses. The tentacles of corporate crime touch all these areas and many more. For example, through false and misleading advertising, just one tobacco company arguably kills and injures more people than all the street thugs put together. The New York Times claimed in a recent editorial (9/23/99) "that 400,000 Americans die annually from tobacco". We can assume that Third World tobacco deaths would double that figure. This could be as many as one million deaths per year. Is this not huge global crime? Are not many of these deaths preventable homicides? Will anyone go to prison for them? Not likely. In Canada that same week, five companies in a world bulk vitamin cartel pleaded guilty to rigging Canadian markets over a period of years. They artificially inflated by up to 30% the price of bread, cereals, milk and other products. This theft cost every Canadian an average of $10.00. The guilty companies were fined $88 million. This is probably one fifth of the profits accrued in that time. No one went to prison; yet they stole from several million people. The World Bank has estimated that over one billion workers in Third World countries live on an income of less than one dollar per day. (World Bank Development Report, 1995.) We are all complicit in this sin, because we know that such starvation wages enable you and I to benefit by buying their products for ridiculously low prices, at the same time as we put huge profits into corporate coffers. This is huge criminal offending against one sixth of the world's population and their families. Does anyone eve get charged with criminal offending for stealing from such workers? Never. Does anyone ever go to prison? Never. Am I truly my brother and sister's keeper? Not really, it seems. Many of these cases of corporate and governmental crime are perfectly legal, but fail every test of morality that seeks to promote justice and protect the Common Good. Too often ever increasing profit is the sole criteria for corporate policies. The rights of workers and their families and the needs of the wider community for gainful employment are ignored. As corporations focus on cheap labor markets and build in economic tax free zones, there is no sense of solidarity, little protection of human rights, and the poor are the disposable fodder used to make even more money for an already rich elite. Such reprehensible behavior is not just spiritually bankrupt but is totally immoral according to God's law and the Church's social teaching. It is sinful. It clearly constitutes massive crime and exploitation against hundreds of thousands of workers. But most of it is perfectly legal. Such is the gap so often between law and morality. The Iraqi people continue to be punished by the U.S. Government and its allies for a war that was not of their making. The sanctions, which inflict malnutrition, disease and death on tens of thousands of children and poor families every year, may be legal, but they are highly immoral. Will any government officials ever be charged over such genocidal criminal behavior? Of course not. The point I am making is that crime is far bigger and more pervasive than we normally perceive. There are huge crimes committed at the governmental and corporate levels, but it is on the street level crime that the media and the wider public generally focus their attention. It is for street level crime that prisons are built. With rare exceptions, it is for the street level crime that the vast apparatus of the criminal prosecution system is primarily employed. It is time we started asking ourselves why this is so. Are the corporate agenda and the power of money so strong that even the legal system (one of our most sacred societal structures) has now become primarily a puppet in their hands? More and more people are now saying "yes" to this understanding. They are seeing that it is usually only the poor who are going to prison and it is for the poor that new prisons are being built. Because of this wider picture of crime, I wish to speak today not just of restorative justice, but of the need to recognize transformative justice processes as well. Restorative justice has huge strengths, but some limitations. Transformative justice has less. I choose this language advisedly. God's justice, as revealed in the sacred scriptures and as defined by the Church in its teachings on the Common Good and other matters, cannot always be achieved fully if one deals only with the immediate matter of a specific offense. For example, if someone offends through burglary who comes from a background of inter-generational abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, poverty, and unemployment, how much justice is achieved through a victim-offender or restorative justice facilitated conference? Transformative justice looks more closely at the background circumstances of the lives of those involved and seeks to redress some of the injustices existing there. It also recognizes the existence of governmental and corporate crime. Both restorative and transformative justice can provide imaginative and creative processes. Neither is a panacea for all crime. Both will provide fairer justice for all, bring some healing to victims, reduce re-offending, make communities safer and reduce the numbers going to prison. You should be aware that much of the language of restorative justice has already been co-opted by vested interests and given new meanings that subvert its huge potential to bring about positive change. One must be very wary of groups with a vested interest in taking control of the restorative justice processes. Police, correctional officials, lawyers, and other professional groupings should not be controlling these processes. The restorative justice process rightfully belongs with the community, not with the state. That is where the power rests in the indigenous cultures where tribal conferencing has been a tradition and where restorative justice is its goal. That is where it remained until English law superceded it. The best results are achieved when the restorative justice process is put into the hands of the people closest to the conflicts to be resolved. Let me make it clear that restorative justice and transformative justice are not new., though modern insights and skills can be extremely useful. They are as ancient as the indigenous peoples of North America and Canada, as aged as the original people who first roamed the mountains, hills and plains of Mexico, as old as Abraham and Sarah in the bible. For when offending happened in their communities, all of these people asked as the primary question, not "How do we punish the offender?", but "How can we fix things up?" This question forms the basis for restorative and transformative justice. By following a retributive model of criminal justice based primarily on punishment and vengeance, the world in the past two centuries has created a monster whose pernicious effects are impacting everywhere. As social decay has taken on a more marked appearance in recent years and the number of poor has increased, imprisonment and harsher penalties have taken on a fresh urgency in the minds of many politicians and with parts of the wider public. Yet of all social policies, surely this is the most failed. Never has any social system been so expensive and failed so consistently as has the system of criminal justice and imprisonment we adhere to so slavishly. Where has it ever worked? Never has any tax dollar been less scrutinized for its fruitfulness than the criminal justice dollar. With the advent of the global economy and the development of private prisons, the prison-industrial complex has emerged worldwide as a major development in the past 20 years. This is frightening, because a combination of bureaucratic, political and economic interests have been set in motion that encourage increased spending on imprisoning people regardless of the actual need or impact on the public weal. Crime rates may often be falling and more effective alternatives to prison may be available, but prison construction continues unabated. The prison-industrial complex is built on a lure of big money and guaranteed jobs not covered by the state's contracts with public employee unions. Its raw material is the same everywhere: poor people, homeless people, uneducated people, mentally ill people, people addicted to alcohol and other drugs, and a wide range of other people who are socially dysfunctional, sometimes psychotic, and occasionally violent. Prisons are the dinosaurs of the modern age. They fail on practically every front.
Prisons fail in practically every positive human indicator scale. As a 1993 Time magazine front cover boldly proclaimed, "Each year jails take large numbers of hopeless people and turn them into bitter, hopeless people." Yet we keep building more. In terms of community usefulness and the promotion of the Common Good, they are a systemic failure. The penal system stands condemned by its own violence and unfairness. Indeed, by its own inhumanity. "Each year jails take large numbers of hopeless people and turn them into bitter, hopeless people." There are unquestionably a "dangerous few" who need to be kept out of circulation for the safety of both themselves and the community. But these are only a small portion to those currently incarcerated. They should be kept in humane containment and encouraged to make constructive use of their time. Otherwise, non-violent constructive alternatives should be used.
The Church's Response to Crime Dealing with issues of crime and law and order, the Church has to proclaim the age old message that Jesus came to bring to the world: "Good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, new sight to the blind, healing for the sick, and freedom for the oppressed." That is our mandate. The teachings of Jesus can bring new light to bear on the difficult issues of conflict and crime in the community. His teachings offer grounding principles to deal with such issues. They involve promoting processes based on justice, equity, fairness and accountability. But such an approach must always be guided by wisdom, tempered by mercy, and must allow for the possibility of healing, forgiveness and reconciliation for both the victim and the offender. This is our Good News. To actively promote these teachings and values is the only reason for the Church to be involved in these areas. If Christian ministry and prison chaplaincy are to have any validity, then they must offer something different to what "the world" or "the system" offers. If we say with Peter, "You are the Christ", then we are accepting the possibility of the transformation of relationships and the redemption of "the world", including the criminal justice system. By definition, this means our ministry must be rooted in gospel truths. Only Christians imbued with the Spirit of Christ will be able to see Christ in the prisoner. It is the Christ in us that will see the Christ in them. We should have no expectations that governments or bureaucracies will see Christ in the prisoner. We have no reason to believe they share much of our understanding of justice. All evidence is that they do not. Our faith teaches that they won't. Hence the imperative for prison ministry to be distinctive and hope filled. Pope John Paul II, in his 1988 encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, wrote of the conditions which prevail to produce what he called "structures of sin". He was referring to social systems which enslave or oppress people and attack the Common Good. These "structures of sin" are found where people are crushed, marginalized or oppressed and are denied the opportunity to develop their God given gifts. Can we not say that the development of the modern prison-industrial complex is such a "structure of sin"? The recent International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care Congress in Mexico City clearly thought so. It noted with alarm that prisons, particularly private prisons, now form an essential part of global economic development strategies and are continuing to be built at an increasing rate, despite the continuing decline in crime rates in many industrialized countries including the United States. The Congress attended by 150 delegates from 55 countries and by officials from the Vatican, described the prison-industrial complex as a "structure of sin" and called for imprisonment to be used only as a "last resort". For many this is a radical shift in focus and one that all need to study carefully. Since the Australian, New Zealand and many European bishops have been using similar language for more than 10 years, it is obviously a shift that is becoming more and more part of mainstream Catholic teaching. This is a major advance in theological thinking about imprisonment, but it is entirely consistent with the Pope's analysis. How can we as Christians stand in solidarity with the poor and their victims, speaking justice, development and peace, when so many are being crushed by prisons? To take such an analysis to its logical conclusion, do we not need to question the very legitimacy of imprisonment itself? Locking grown adults into a 12' by 8' cell for up to 23 hours a day, for months, or even years on end, should be abhorrent to any caring person. It should be particularly abhorrent to Christians. It runs contrary to practically everything the Church teaches. Only the twisted could regard such procedure as acceptable. Or those whose vested interests bends their judgment. Sadly, many groups in the community have a huge vested interest in maintaining the status quo, regardless of how destructive the system might be. We need to recognize that these vested interests do exist, and we need to name them. We also must be aware that they have very effective propaganda machines and a great deal of money is involved. The message of Christ will not always be popular. But if the message of Christ is that prisons are sinful, then the Church has a duty to be unequivocal in its condemnation of such structures and to be committed in promoting alternative processes of criminal justice. There is no alternative. Either we sanction sin, or we offer grace. There is a corollary. Does the Church through its traditional chaplaincy services support and succor this sinful system, or seek to transform it? Does prison ministry sit snugly in the bosom of the prison system, or stand with a distinctive transforming message? Are we being true to the teachings of Christ and our professed faith, or are we being compromised? These are not easy questions, but they are practical ones that need to be answered. I believe the dawn of a new millennium is an ideal time for the Church to rethink and clarify the underpinning morality upon which the criminal justice system sits. We should re-examine its relationship to the law, the increasing use of imprisonment as a response to crime and the role that the Church itself and prison ministry should play.
Biblical Justice Talking restorative justice recently with members of para-militaries in the Falls and Shankhill Roads of Belfast in Northern Ireland was a bit of a shock to me. They remain at enmity with each other. They still don't even talk or mix socially. No where within the social structures of Northern Ireland have the hardliners of the two communities been able to make eye contact or to hear one another's stories and to start to repair the damage done by years of conflict. Yet their stories are so similar. Their aspirations and dreams for their respective communities are nearly identical. What separates them is their tribal histories and their mind sets. What perpetuates that separation is a lack of social structures where natural inter-change could occur. Restorative justice processes enable such meetings to happen. Guided by a skilled facilitator, people with opposite views are encouraged to meet and share their stories. And, like Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, they learn from one another. It is only when such stories are told and pain is shared that healing can begin and love grow. The same applies to crime. How much anguish and pain could be healed if only criminal justice structures were in place to enable healing and reconciliation to commence. How much safer our society would be if instead of only having a hundred courthouses pitting offenders against the state, we also had hundreds of facilitated restorative justice gatherings each day -- with offenders meeting in conferences with their victims. Jesus advised us to do just that. "Don't take your brother to court," he said, "try and get it sorted first." A paradigm shift in thinking would first be required for most of us. We would need to shift from being punishment focused to being primarily reparative oriented. Such a shift in mind set should not be a major problem for most Christians. The whole focus of biblical justice in the ancient scriptures is not on punishment, but centers on maintaining the covenant between God and the people, promoting social justice as demanded by the prophets and seeking shalom. Shalom means wholeness, fulfillment, health and well being, peace and prosperity. Each requires that damage done by crime be repaired. Punishment was always secondary to seeking to repair the harm done. Shalom, Social Justice and the Covenant are the three most central concepts of biblical law. In his seminal 1990 book on restorative justice, Changing Lenses, Howard Zehr points out (p. 133) that shalom is not just a peripheral theme of Scripture, but a basic core belief from which God's vision and plan for creation and the development of the human family flow. Hence, notions of salvation, atonement, forgiveness and justice have their roots in shalom. Usually, "shalom" is translated in English to mean "peace". That is an inadequate translation. Perry Yoder [Shalom: the Bible's word for Salvation, Justice and Peace, 1987, p. 130] gives three basic dimensions to its meaning. They are (1) physical well being, including adequate food, clothing, shelter and wealth, (2) a right relationship between and among people, and (3) the acquisition of virtue, especially honesty and moral integrity. The absence of shalom means the absence of one or another of these features. There is a flow-on of this concept in the New Testament where Christ's life and teachings and eventually his death and resurrection transform relationships between and among people, thus inaugurating the New Creation, wherein shalom is lived by believers. The great recorded biblical voices of Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Zephaniah and Ezekiel remind the people that to remain blessed requires that they practice social justice. These ancient prophets crystallize the centrality of social justice as a prerequisite for God's continuing blessing. Time and again they remind their listeners that God will not continue to uphold the people if they refuse to practice justice, especially to the poor, the needy, the oppressed and the marginalized. It is from this understanding that the prophets are able to warn that the entire nation is doomed, because some widows have been mistreated or because the hungry have not been allowed to glean the fields. Not only all the people but the land itself is caught up in sin and all its consequences, for the meadows lie barren and the mountains quake and the trees bear no fruit. For Israel, the fullest response to crime was not the isolated punishment of an individual law-breaker, but the repentance of the entire nation. It is the voice of prophets down through the centuries to our own day. Without freedom and justice, there can be no salvation. The other major concept that has a direct relationship with law and justice is that of covenant. A covenant is a binding agreement between parties. There were several in the Scriptures, starting with God and creation, God with Abraham, Sarah and the newly created People of God, God with Moses representing the people on Mount Sinai when the Ten Commandments were given. The culminating covenant came with Jesus and the whole of humanity at the Last Supper. This new covenant opened up for humanity a new way of viewing things, of relating, of recognizing the dignity of each person within the context of their community. Crime was a violation of the covenant. It needed to be repaired. Justice is tested by the outcome, as a tree is tested by its fruit. In the biblical view, the test of justice is not whether the right rules are applied in the right way. The substance, not the procedure, defines justice. And how should things come out? The litmus test is how the poor and the oppressed are affected. In biblical times such justice was enacted on an everyday basis in Jewish settlements. Citizens went to the city gates to seek justice from the judges or elders who presided there for this purpose. The whole focus for this "court" setting was to find a solution for the aggrieved person. The judge was not primarily the one who rewarded someone with money damages (distributive justice). He was the one who created order and restored what had been taken or destroyed. In the New Testament, Jesus specifically rejects the concept of "an eye for an eye" -- that proportional response so abused by modern popular usage. "If anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other one as well. Give him your coat and your tunic, walk two miles not one." (Matt. 5:38). This is radical stuff -- and quite practical today if properly understood. Jesus is asking for a generous response from those who have been victimized by crime. He knows -- indeed God teaches -- that unless people take such an attitude, they will usually end up becoming doubly victimized. The first time will be with the actual crime. The second will be through the hurt, bitterness and feelings of vengeance that can so easily poison a person's spirit if allowed to germinate. These are wise teachings indeed. Jesus teaches generosity of spirit when it comes to dealing with crime. To the woman facing the death penalty, he said simply "go and sin no more". Through the parable of the farmer who hired day workers, Jesus reminded us again how God's justice works. Each got paid at the end of the day what they needed to feed their families, even though they had worked uneven hours. It is a parable of restorative and transformative justice. Provide what is needed. Generosity of spirit is always at the heart of the Gospel teaching on crime and victimization. Forgive seventy-seven times seven. Surely that's too hard to do? Not so, says Jesus. It's not easy, but it can be done. In effect, he teaches us that if we don't attempt these very difficult matters then we run the grave risk of being damaged spiritually. Restorative justice options are not easy. But they sit at the heart of the Cross and at the doorway to the Empty Tomb. They are life giving. We short change ourselves and our neighbor with anything less.
Towards the New Millennium What then are some of the real alternatives based on the justice and mercy of God as revealed in Christian tradition? There are six that readily come to mind which, if expanded and given proper resources, would reduce re-offending, help offenders take responsibility for their behavior, produce better more healing results for victims, offenders and the community, make our communities healthier and safer and be much more affordable.
Conclusion The reality of the prison-industrial complex is that it no longer is an acceptable structure because of its violence, its ever widening expansion, its failure rate, its expense and its detrimental effect on the incarcerated and their families. Just as slavery, genital mutilation and public floggings have been abolished over the past hundred years because people came to see them as dehumanizing and violent processes, so imprisonment needs to be abolished in the coming years. Now is the time to begin. With more than eight million (8,000,000) people already imprisoned around the world and the numbers set to accelerate over the next decade, people of good will everywhere have to see that imprisonment is unacceptable, a "structure of sin" in religious terms. Only weak politicians and those who profit monetarily from the prison industry, benefit from maintaining this archaic system of punishment. Like the slave owners and their political apologists of old, they must be confronted over their evil exploitation of the poor, the weak, the uneducated, the vulnerable, the mentally ill, the homeless, the hopeless, those addicted to drugs and alcohol, the illegal immigrants, and the asylum seekers who make up the bulk of the world's prison populations. None of these people pose such a serious threat to the rest of society that we are justified in stripping their liberty and dignity from them. If these facts are accurate and the modern prison-industrial complex is "a structure of sin", then logically the abolition of the prison system and the promotion of alternatives to imprisonment including transformative and restorative justice processes should be a mandatory part of the Church's mission to the world. There are unquestionably "a dangerous few" who need to be kept out of circulation for the safety of both themselves and the community. But these would need to be only a small portion of those currently incarcerated. They should be kept in safe humane containment and encouraged to make constructive use of their time. Otherwise, non-violent constructive alternatives should be used, which do not involve full-time deprivation of liberty. No longer should the abolition of prisons be seen as a fringe movement. "The promotion of justice is an essential part of preaching the gospel." (1971 World Synod of Bishops) No longer should the Church and prison chaplains in any way be seen to be supportive of this dehumanizing and sinful system. Resurrected hope and God's grace and strong action by the Church could bring about a necessary change in the mind set of the wider public. It is with commitment to such power that the Church, its prison ministries and indeed all Christians should witness.
Jim Consedineis a Catholic priest in Christchurch, New Zealand, who is an internationally known and respected campaigner for justice. He has been a prison chaplain for more than 20 years and is the national coordinator of New Zealand's Restorative Justice Network. He has had many papers published internationally on economics, racism, criminal justice and spirituality. He is also the author of A Poison in the Blood Stream (1991) and Restorative Justice: Healing the Effects of Crime (1995, 1999). He also authored an article in Just Line published by the Maryland Justice Policy Institute. His 1995 article entitled, New Zealand's Alternative System of Justice: The Maori Restorative Tradition, (JL 95-2, page 1) described the traditional Maori system of resolving conflicts. Jim Consedine's two books on Restorative Justice are now available in the United States from the Catholic Worker Bookstore, Box 3087, Washington, DC, or call 1 800 43-PEACE. The books are: Restorative Justice: Contemporary Themes and Practices (1999) The price for each book is US $12.00 plus postage. | ||
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