Forgivenss in the restorative paradigm

Dialogue About Forgiveness:

Exploring Restorative Justice Values

Tom Cavanagh, Facilitator

This paper is intended to create a dialogue about a core value of restorative justice, forgiveness. In the spirit of collaboration which is important to restorative justice, this dialogue is intended to bring together the best thoughts of people committed to restorative justice in order that we might name and explore the core values of restorative justice. These core values will then serve as the foundation for the mission and vision of community restorative justice practices across the United States.

When we think of forgiveness, three words come to mind, I am sorry. Forgiveness is a fundamental concept in the restorative justice process. However, forgiveness is more than saying I am sorry.

Restorative justice was identified by the National Center for State Courts as a major trend in juvenile criminal justice in the United States. Restorative justice is based on a balanced focus on the offender, victim, and community. Forgiveness is a core value of this process, which affects the three parties harmed by crime. Forgiveness is a key to peace in our communities, which is the vision of restorative justice.

The New Zealand Catholic bishops described forgiveness as an essential part of the Christian message, along with mercy and healing, which leads to reconciliation or the healing of relationships. To understand forgiveness involves a paradigm switch from a retributive notion of an eye for an eye to the restorative concept of shalom.

Shalom is a core belief of restorative justice and the foundation of a biblical understanding of this process. The three key elements of shalom are:

All-rightness - This phrase is the root of the meaning of justice in restorative justice. All-rightness is the more complete meaning of shalom, beyond the usual definition of peace. All-rightness leads to the second element.

Living in right relationships - Healing broken relationships and creating new relationships is fundamental to restorative justice. These relationships include God and other people. The third element describes the key value of such relationships. Loving relationships are the essence of God’s presence.

Honest and straightforward - Restorative justice calls people to be genuine, to live with each other in an honest and straightforward manner.

Shalom, understood and lived as described in these three elements, leads to reconciliation or healing of broken relationships. Such reconciliation results in a covenant agreement between all the parties involved, usually through some type of conference or dialogue. The entire shalom/reconciliation process results in a transformation of people.

Thomas Aquinas’ writings and natural law tenants form the basis of the understanding of living in relationship with others as the essence of our being. Such understanding comes from our basic inclinations as rational people to decide how we should behave, based on the following:

To seek the good.

Preserve self.

Preserve others.

Live in community.

Use of intellect and will to make choices based on truth.

Retributive justice, based on Age of Enlightenment thinking, is founded on the belief of people as sociable, that is, becoming involved in relationships by consent, which leads to self-fulfillment. The restorative justice philosophy is based on the natural law thinking of people as being social, that is, relational by nature, resulting in a vision of people living together in healthy relationships. As a result, the focus of restorative justice is on restoring broken relationships, rather than on retribution or punishment.

The foundation of building healthy relationships in our communities is a focus on the common good rather that satisfying our individual needs and desires. Catholic Worker philosopher Peter Maurin described the common good, ÒAccording to St. Thomas Aquinas, man is more than an individual with individual rights; he is a person with personal duties toward God, himself, and his fellow man. As a person, man cannot serve God without serving the Common Good.Ó

The key to serving the common good is recognizing all people are entitled to be respected as persons. Such respect is lost in the individualistic/utilitarian focus of retributive justice. Restorative justice realizes the common good is served by bringing together all persons involved in a crime to discuss the resulting harm in terms of what harm was caused, what needs to be done to repair the harm, and who is responsible for repairing the harm.

In a restorative justice environment, community members are accountable and committed to one another and the community as a whole. Such commitment leads to discipline when one community member harms another, which is key to the restoration process. This discipline needs to be voluntary and done with love, sensitivity, and respect. The goal is restoration of relationships, not punishment, because punishment without restoration is adverse to the common good and avoids accountability and responsibility on the part of the offender.

Before the harm can be repaired and the relationships restored, repentance and forgiveness must occur. In order for the victim to experience forgiveness, the offender needs to experience and express responsibility and regret for the resulting harm, and offer genuine repentance. Victim forgiveness ultimately is a gift, not a burden and does not mean that the victim forgets. Such forgiveness leads to two outcomes for the victim: empowerment and healing.

Before responsibility and regret can be expressed, the offender needs to experience personal forgiveness. Repentance and reparation are achieved by resolving the guilt. The offender needs to commit to a new lifestyle, focused on a healthy identity and sense of self-worth, rehabilitation from a criminal mindset to a focus on the common good, and acceptance of responsibility for the harm resulting from the behavior, with accountability to the victim, community, and himself or herself. In the midst of this process, the dignity of the offender needs to be maintained.

The spiritual works of mercy are part of the Catholic tradition. Two of the works apply to forgiveness in the restorative justice context:

Bear wrongs patiently - Whether we are the direct victim of the harm, a family member, or a person in the community involved, we are called upon to pray for hope and perseverance and also wisdom and courage to confront the wrongdoer, when possible.

Forgive all injuries - The victims of wrongdoing are invited to cry out to God in their anger, to vent their deepest feelings resulting from the offense. Then, the injured can ask for healing of themselves and the offender and pray for a way to answer the call to reconciliation.

Jennifer Haines is the author of ÒBread and WaterÓ and an active contemplative, In a personal interview she shared these thoughts about forgiveness:

God is love.

The nature of love is to give and share.

The overflow of God’s love resulted in the creation of the world, and God gave self into creation.

The purpose of those created is the evolutionary development of people, capable of love, who share in and give back God’s love, in order that they can receive and return love.

However, love is not love unless freely given, which necessarily involves free will. We are free to choose to love or not to love. The purpose of free will is to choose to love. The choice not to love results in sin or an offense against another.

God’s answer to sin is to suffer the wrong. There are two ways to suffer: 1) crucifixion and 2) forgiveness. None of us will choose crucifixion. However, forgiveness is a choice available to us to deal with the harm of someone else’s sin and nullify the effects of such wrong.

Suffering does not mean we ignore the pain resulting from the wrong. We are called to feel the pain, instead of hiding the hurt. One of Jennifer’s stories will help illustrate the point.

At that time Jennifer was in jail. While standing in her jail cell one day undressed, a male guard turned on the light and saw her naked. He just stared and said nothing, not even excuse me or I’m sorry. The incident touched an emotionally sensitive spot in Jennifer. This same officer brought breakfast to her each morning. As a result of the event, Jennifer began refusing breakfast in order to avoid the officer. The pain resulting from the harm continued. Jennifer realized she needed to reconcile her relationship with the jailer by accepting breakfast. When she did accept breakfast, the pain was released, and she felt the pain, instead of hiding it. Then the pain was over.

This story illustrates the essence of forgiveness, which is to accept the injustice and to be willing to allow unfairness and instead choose love, rather than personal rights. Thus healing becomes the focus, instead of pursuing private rights.

Contribution of Judge Fred McElrea, author, speaker, and pioneer of restorative justice values in the New Zealand courts:

1.) You say: "Before responsibility and regret can be expressed, the

offender needs to experience personal forgiveness." I don't think this is

necessarily or even usually so. In our experience of RJ out here in New

Zealand it is usually the other way round - that before the victim can start

to feel and express forgiveness s/he needs to know that the offender has

taken responsibility for what has been done. Probably the most common

sequence of events in a family group conference for a young offender is for

there to be some discussion of the facts of the case, usually introduced by

a police officer; then the victim expresses his/her feelings about what has

happened, usually feelings of hurt, anger, frustration, fear etc, and thereby

helps the offender to see that what has been done is not just a "property

crime" (or whatever) but an infringement at a deep personal level; the youth

usually responds with some sort of expression of regret or remorse, however

inarticulate, and this in turn releases the victim from the past and enables

him/her to start looking forward and seeking a positive outcome for all

concerned - the "win/win" solution that can break the all too common cycle

of hurtful outcomes.

2.) Forgiveness is an important value in the RJ process but I do not

think it should ever be laid upon any victim as an expectation. To the

contrary, that is likely to be counter-productive and make the victim feel

that more is being expected of her than she is receiving - ie to see it as a

quid pro quo. Instead forgiveness should be allowed to flow naturally as a

blessed fruit of this human interaction in which people cease to see each

other as adversaries and can respond to each other as fellow creatures.

Sometimes this occurs and sometimes it does not, or perhaps not until later.

If in the process those involved recognize the divine spark of God's love

then so much the better.

3.) Putting these two points together, it is probably THE LIFE EXPERIENCE OF EACH OTHER AS HUMAN BEINGS, AND THE CHEMISTRY OF THE PROCESS OF HUMAN INTERACTION, THAT ENABLES THE SHACKLES OF THE PAST TO BE BROKEN AND THE EXPERIENCE OF REMORSE, RESPECT AND FORGIVENESS TO OCCUR. As a recent visitor here from Northern Ireland (Dr Derek Wilson) put it to me, getting people into a relationship, ie to relate to one another as human beings, enables past stereotypes to be overcome. I think that is profoundly true. Our traditional criminal justice practices and procedures typically prevent this from happening because (a) the victim is largely excluded, and (b) our

court rituals and the heavy involvement of professionals serve to

de-personalise the experience for those most directly affected.

Contribution from Jim Zion, Solicitor for the Judicial Branch of the Navajo Nation:

The difficulty is that while these abstract concepts are good to focus our

thoughts, I am more interested in what happens on the ground.

I've been reading John Braithwaite and Donald L. Nathanson and find that shame is a barrier. We need to find mechanisms to overcome shame, which is related to denial and lashing out at others. As mentioned, one of the keys is self-

forgiveness. One must forgive self and overcome the shame barrier before one

can genuinely and sincerely communicate with whoever was injured by your

actions. That requires an atmosphere which reduces shame and allows people to

open up. The person who is injured suffers from shame as well. Too often,

the victim rights movement encourages the "poor me" aspect of shame rather

than promote the feelings that allow victims to overcome the shame of being

vulnerable and be able to express forgiveness.

Lauri Growhowski's study of Navajo peacemaking and her cognitive-affective shift theory where people go from "head thinking" to "heart thinking" gives a valuable insight. We are after the dynamic of empathy.

The Navajo concept is k'e, which is a form of solidarity where people

recognize their related-ness to each other and the need to express respect

feelings. The process promotes understandings of relationships, reciprocal

relationships and reciprocity as a value, "taking pity" on others, and similar

values which require those who have injured to bend and those who have been

injured to bend.

What is a "criminal mindset"? One of the things that bothers me with the

prison industrial complex (to quote Angelia Davis from a conference a few days

ago) is that we brand people and make them "the other," i.e. criminals. Are

they? Aren't they also our family members, neighbors, and friends? Navajo

peacemaking shows us there is a role for the familial, as in accounts of Maori

family group conferencing where a respected relative will lecture the young

offender. There are some ideas on that kind of process in my piece, "The

Dynamics of Navajo Peacemaking," 14(3) Journal of Contemporary Criminal

Justice 58 (February 1998).

This is great. This is a philosophical foundation. Next comes praxis.

Contribution from Mary Grace Coming, a member of CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants):

A Meditation on Agape

March 6, 1996

Note: I am so very grateful to Madeleine L'Engle for her insights on agape that helped me toward starting down the road to personal healing in the area of love. The following is a quote from her book: "A Circle of Quiet" that sparked this meditation.

(p. 157) "When she (a teacher) decided that I was neither bright nor attractive nor worth her attention, she excluded me, and this is the most terrible thing one human being can do to another. She ended up annihilating herself.

To annihilate. That is murder."

"I didn't try to learn anything for the annihilating teacher..."

"I worry about this. I worry about it in myself. When I am angry or hurt, do I tend to try to exclude the person who has hurt me?"

"They are people I would rather forget. They have brought into my life such bitterness and pain that my instinct is to wipe them out of my memory and my life.And that is murder.

"George MacDonald said: "It may be infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be a moment of passion; the latter is the heart's choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated."

(p. 158) Speaking of George MacDonald, Madeleine says: "And he has finally made me understand what lack of forgiveness means. I cannot stay angry; this is not a virtue in me; I am physically incapable of going to bed out of sorts with anybody. But, although I have not stayed mad, have I excluded? put from my mind the person who has upset me? It is this which is the act of unforgiving."

"The Greeks, as usual, had a word for the forgiving kind of love which never excludes. They call it agape. There are many definitions of agape, but the best I know is in one of Edward Nason West's books: agape means "a profound concern for the welfare of another without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process."

Not easy, but if we can follow it, it will mean that we will never exclude. Not the old, the ill, the dying. Not the people who have hurt us, who have done us wrong... ."

(p. 170) "The Greeks in their wisdom had four words for our one, love, there was charity, agape; sexual love, eros; family love, storge; friendship, philia."

Meditation (personal reflections)

The struggle to forgive seems to be unending, and perhaps it is -- something that shows we are alive. In trying to gain peace, I found that I cast about for some sort of escape from the unending struggle and of course settled on "forget." That is ludicrous, actually, because to live is to remember. Madeleine L'Engle's thoughts on the subject really bought me up short. I was trying hard to commit spiritual murder -- to banish the hurtful person from my mind, my life. I was trying to hurt the other person by annihilating him -- making him cease to exist. I was actually committing a worse sin -- unforgiveness -- than had been committed against me originally by the person who hurt me. This was quite a humbling thought. But it was the beginning of healing, because when I really thought about what I was doing, I realized that in no way did I want to commit spiritual murder. In scripture God speaks to the soul and tells it -- I will never forget you -- even though a mother forget her child, I will never forget you. God will never murder us -- never banish us from His mind and we are called to follow His example and be all forgiving too. So the struggle must go on. We forgive and forgive and forgive -- as long as we have breath, as long as we can think -- as long as we can pray -- we forgive -- we never banish anyone to oblivion.

This naturally led me to prison. Prison is society's unforgiveness -- banishment. Society is unable to forgive so it banishes people to prison -- tries to forget them -- says they are hopeless, harmful to society. Gives up on the individual person. Prison is society's failure to deal with an individual. Society tries to sweet talk itself -- to rationalize its action by saying -- we'll get you help in prison, but in actuality, it only goes through the motions -- technically it really just "locks people up" to get rid of them. Then Society doesn't have to bother. In the case of the death penalty, Society throws away the key and washes itself from the responsibility of that person. It literally annihilates those on death row.

When I say "Society" I mean myself. I am "society." When I am part and party of putting someone in prison, I take part in the annihilation -- I give up on the person. I say he isn't worth my time, my thought, my caring, my agape -- the person is hopeless -- unredeemable -- a menace to society -- so I say, "lock him up." Forget him. I am unforgiving. It is an indictment on our times that we are giving up more and more on people. We are not even giving agape a chance -- we are throwing up our hands and saying, "you are a hopeless individual and I can't love you, so I'll abandon you to the state who will lock you up." Then in clear conscience I can forget about you -- you are out of sight and out of mind. You are out of my life. Go away -- don't go away mad -- just go away. As a result we are building more and more prisons and filling them faster than we can build them. As a society we have failed utterly n agape, which is to say, as individuals we have, each one of us, failed in agape. We have become so desperate to annihilate that we are reinstating the death penalty in state after state. That indeed, is very desperate.

So what is the answer? Return to agape. Return to making the effort (each individual) of forgiving those who hurt us -- that's the first step. Return to realizing that each one of these "worthless" (in our eyes) creatures remains a creature of God -- and God loves them regardless, (they are never "worthless" to God) and start on a one-on-one basis -- after all pain is inflicted on a one-on-one basis, so healing must proceed that way too. First start forgiving, refusing to annihilate those who have hurt us deeply; remembering them daily in prayer is the very first step. From there, things will happen that will open up the healing way. We have to stop sending people to prison (actually we have relegated people to the status of animals when we send them to prison) -- stop giving up on them -- start interacting with them, getting them professional support, but more importantly, our own personal support. Telling them they are important, that

God loves them (and then show that God loves them by loving them too), that they've made terrible mistakes, but they are forgiven and need to change their lives and then help them to do that. Not just tell them to do that but HELP them to do that, on a one-on-one basis. Notice that Madeleine L'Engle quit trying once the teacher "excluded" her from the society of the classroom. Prison has the same effect. The general attitude there is -- you gave up on me -- I give up on you. It is self-defeating. A vicious circle of hate, hate, hate. Sometimes this helping of others will lead to the supreme sacrifice -- Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his fellowman. The supreme agape!!

Who is to be the prime mover in agape? The Church, of course. This is mandated by Christ. The Church must be the leader. Take for example people who are alcoholics. Do we send them to prison? No. We have actual programs -- AA -- who work on a one-on-one basis with these people We don't exclude them from society. We don't tell them they are hopeless -- we don't annihilate them. I foresee the Church setting up various groups to deal with various problems that have led people down the wrong path to trouble. In these groups we treat the sinner as a person and we help him with his problem and we give him one-on-one support. (One-on-one help is very crucial here.) The Church gives its support through the sacraments. They are in place, ready to be used. These helping groups must come out of the Church's organization, because these groups must have a spiritual dimension. The state is not spiritually oriented. It is not geared to deal with the sinner. It is geared to annihilate, and it is an expert at that! So the problem rests at the Church's door. Agape will only be realized when the Church takes her responsibility seriously and starts moving her people in that direction. In summary, I encourage us all to step out in agape. To stop the trend of annihilation, to forgive and then to help those we've forgiven one-on-one toward becoming another Christ.

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