Restoring Justice
The US has one of the largest incarceration rates of any country in the world. We put so many people in jail that we’re running out of space. This happens to be a problem for us right here in Big Horn County. Our county jail is overcrowded. Millions was spent already on a possible facility, and now we are looking to spend more.
It seems like one of those situations that just can’t go on. The more people we lock up, the worse the problem gets. We know that prison doesn’t cure addiction. It doesn’t help people get good jobs to support their families. It doesn’t teach people how to get along with others or how to function in the real world. It especially doesn’t lead to good outcomes for children.
What is to be done? After all, we can’t have dangerous people out on the streets. We can’t let people get away with behaviors that are against the law. Do we just keep people locked up for life, knowing they’re likely to be worse when they come out?
Maybe we could learn something from our indigenous nations. Many cultures have used the concept of restorative justice successfully for thousands of years. Restorative justice is an approach that focuses on allowing people to make up for the damage their actions have caused others. People who commit crimes are forced to dedicate their own lives to helping their victims.
Up in Northern Canadian indigenous fishing communities, a native offender gives up his own trap lines to work for the family of an individual he injures. Often he will work for and with his victim’s family on their daily life-sustaining tasks. He might manage that family’s trap lines, supply firewood, repair or purchase fishing and hunting equipment, or build and maintain their homes. Depending on the offense, a person’s whole life could become dedicated to caring for the family suffering loss from his crime.
This is a life sentence that produces something of value. It truly involves relinquishing a major part of a previous life, but in return the life of the entire community is moved toward restoration. Often there is no recidivism. These indigenous nations’ corrective judicial systems really do what every normal retributive justice correction facility cannot do, but claims to do.
A restorative justice approach involves a different way of thinking about those who commit crimes. In this view, antisocial behaviors are thought to result from disrupted connections between people, rather than unchangeable character flaws. This perspective might lead us toward fixing the losses that lead people to criminal activity, instead on concentrating on harsher punishments for offenders.
Maybe we in Big Horn County could learn more from criminal justice systems where restorative justice is the dominant response to crime, where retribution in kind is usually rejected, knowing it does little to heal antisocial behavior. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom doesn’t agree. But research proves even Jesus got it right. “Life for a life,” or, “An eye for an eye,” is what Jesus rejected when he commanded, “Do not return evil for evil.” He seemed to know, and maybe it’s still true: criminals are best deterred by tough insistence on connection to human virtues, especially being forced to see, hear, and understand directly as possible from their victims, and then do something about the pain and suffering their crimes cost.
As a teacher since the 70’s in Big Horn and Rosebud Counties I felt that it was my job to recognize and promote the good in all children. What if we could do this for our community as a whole? Our conventional criminal justice system already recognizes that delinquent children should not simply be punished and left to rot in jail. What if we could recognize the potential for virtuous pro-social behavior in all people, regardless of age, and provide opportunities to make up for misdeeds in meaningful ways? I think our community might ultimately be safer and more effective by promoting the values and virtues we share in common, which means requiring offenders to connect with their victims, where appropriate*, to do all they can to repair the damage of their antisocial behavior.
Sources on restorative justice:
https://emu.edu/now/peacebuilder/2009/10/how-effective-is-restorative-justice/
A meta-analysis of all restorative justice research written in English, Restorative Justice: The Evidence [by scholars Lawrence W. Sherman and Heather Strang of Cambridge University], concluded in at least two trials, that when used as a diversion, restorative justice reduced violent re-offending, victim’s desire for revenge, and costs. A 2007 University of Wisconsin study found that Barron County’s restorative justice program [in northwestern Wisconsin] led to significant declines in youth violence, arrests, crime, and recidivism
*Sexual violence, abuse and rape
These and many offenses, especially among adults, require community restoration rather than a relationship between victim and offender. Current justice procedures too often heap abuse upon abuse, often requiring victim and offender both to be present in a courtroom, an environment potentially perpetuating the rapist’s power over the victim. http://rapecrisis.org.za/information-for-survivors/secondary-trauma/
NIH gets it right.The community response to rape: victims' experiences with the legal, medical, and mental health systems.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9726113
The following paper deals with power imbalance issues in gender.
Quote from the author:
“Applying an intersectional view of how and why campus rape occurs, I argue that colleges and universities should seek to engage the broader student community in dialogue and utilize the grievance process as a means of both holding offenders accountable and preventing future rapes. Restorative justice offers one model for how schools might augment their campus grievance processes to respond to acquaintance rape cases to achieve these goals. Though a restorative justice approach may not be appropriate in every case, I argue that it may provide significant benefits for some survivors and offenders, and help to fill the gaps between existing preventative and remedial approaches.”
http://www.justiceaction.org.au/cms/prisons/alternatives/restorative-justice
“Restorative Justice is a form of mediation that aims to reconcile the tensions between offenders, victims and the community, rather than retributive justice, which merely punishes the offender. “Restorative Justice aims to heal the community bonds and to have a humanising effect on the system of punitive justice”.
http://www.justiceaction.org.au/cms/prisons/alternatives/restorative-justice - _edn1
[1] It enables stakeholders to cooperate and come to an agreement on appropriate outcomes at different stages of the criminal process, not just in the pre-trial process, as it is commonly perceived to be.
This research paper has been prepared in light of questions of the effectiveness of Restorative Justice for reducing recidivism rates.http://www.justiceaction.org.au/cms/prisons/alternatives/restorative-justice - _edn2
[2] International studies referred to in this paper dispel this criticism. For Restorative Justice to be effective, emphasis is placed on reconciliation, where offenders accept responsibility for their actions and make amends and in turn create a level of empowerment in their own rehabilitation.
Effective use of Restorative Justice processes can displace resources from the prison systems, enabling them to be put into the community. The term “justice reinvestment” describes the transfer of those resources into the source area of the problems. Trained community workers reconcile the tensions, often using those same people who have personally experienced the process, either as victims or offenders. For this role to be effective it must have trust, be independent of the coercive process and protected by privacy legislation such as created for community justice centres.
This paper proposes the extension of Restorative Justice programs from not just the pre-sentencing
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/jstc-rcdvs/index-eng.aspx
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/jstc-rcdvs/jstc-rcdvs-eng.pdf
Question: Can restorative justice programs influence offender recidivism?
Background: The traditional way of dealing with crime in society is for the State to intervene by punishing the offender. The punishment of offenders is seen to serve justice through denunciation and deterrence. Some critics of this approach have argued that the focus on offenders ignores victims and the community. In the 1970s, an alternative approach, restorative justice, began to emerge and, particularly in the last decade, has proliferated across North America and other parts of the world.
Restorative justice seeks to involve victims and the community in a process that holds the offender accountable for repairing the harms committed by the offender.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=147713
Victim-offender reconciliation and mediation programs involving juvenile offenders in California, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Texas were studied to determine the effectiveness of these programs
international virtues project
http://www.52virtues.com/virtues/the-virtues-project.php
The History of The Virtues Project
| The Virtues Project was founded in 1991 by three concerned individuals who made a commitment to do something to counteract the rising violence among families and youth. Linda Kavelin-Popov, her husband Dr. Dan Popov and her brother, John Kavelin researched the world's diverse sacred traditions and they discovered something simple and profound. |
Essence of the human spirit
At the heart of all spiritual traditions are 360 virtues, described as the essence of the human spirit and the content of our character. A guide containing fifty-two of these universal virtues was published to help parents bring out the best in their children and in themselves.
Used in more than 85 countries
Since then many books and other resources have been published to help educators, businesses and governments implement the virtues. The project has grown into a global grass roots network of diverse individuals, organizations, schools, and communities in more than 85 countries, including Australia. It has been used in many Western Australian schools for 10 years and is growing in popularity now in the Eastern States.
Not about religion
The Virtues Project is not about the practices or beliefs of any one religion. It is sourced in the teachings about virtues found in the sacred traditions of all cultures. Its purpose is to support all people, both those who are religious and those who are not, to awaken the virtues of their character.
aboriginal justice CPT
http://www.cpt.org/work/aboriginal_justice/mandate
CPT’s Aboriginal Justice Team is mandated with undoing colonialism and supporting Indigenous communities seeking justice and defending their lands against corporate and government exploitation without community consent. Our work includes human rights monitoring and reporting, non-violence training, presence and accompaniment, court witnessing, education and advocacy through presentations to schools and churches, articles and media releases, organizing fact-finding and learning delegations to areas of conflict or oppression, participating in and/or offering logistical support for public actions and speaking tours. CPT seeks to enlist the whole church in the work of undoing colonialism.
Other links of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
http://www.cpt.org/category/cptnet-categories/aboriginal-justice
It’s often not appropriate to bring a perpetrator and victim together. Restorative justice usually doesn’t happen with a power imbalance between victim and perpetrator. This is almost always the case with abuse, especially sexual abuse of children and rape. In indigenous nations, a third party representing the needs of the less powerful party may carry much or even all the responsibility to connect with the perpetrator. Thus the “triangulation” concern of modern Western psychology is understood often potentially positive.
bioneers
http://lakotawaldorfschool.blogspot.com/
A good friend of mine, now one of the last of the Council of Forty-four Cheyenne Peace Chiefs, applied these virtues a half century ago as a young man. He was disciplined to resist vengeance at a battle re-enactment of the Washita Massacre, then still not acknowledged as a deadly evil military action. Black Kettle, his great-grandfather and a peace chief nearly 150 years ago, had advocated was quoted as saying not long before Custer’s bugler played Garrwyown and his troops surrounded a peaceful Cheyenne village assembly. Just appointed, and now Our system works hard to treat antisocial behavior with more separation instead of reconnection, with pain of responsibility lost instead of the pain of enormously more responsibility, by damaging and breaking family relationships instead of nourishing them, by more hardness and absolute power instead of vulnerability, and by a belief that eventually, because of punishment, the criminal will “see the light.”
In fact, our national mania toward justice rests on retribution, an opposite concept. This starts in the way we treat our children at home and in schools, backed up by immovable assumptions reinforced in every sitcom and cartoon on TV: “Bad deeds need payback. Give ‘em what he deserves. Teach ‘em a lesson. Don’t let them get by. Give ‘em a dose of their own medicine.” All these common phrases are part and parcel of a failed system that supposedly nurtures children into good citizens. It doesn’t. This is the message of loads of research of child development.
Finding resources to do this is the job of some two-dozen family and child service agencies in Big Horn County. In the last two years these agencies have built connecting links with each other sharing resources for health care, behavioral help, parental support, family income jobs, emergency resources, justice services, funding information, referrals and ideas for growing the good all children need to survive in this world. That linking organization, Big Horn County Best Beginnings, for the last two years has been joining with parents and care givers fighting against problems that smash and destroy the good in children, leading them to cope with stress by acting out in ways that endanger other’s safety, interfere with others’ learning, risk their own health and safety, keep them from adequate health care, healthy nutrition, safety at home and in the neighborhood, and stop learning of positive people relationships. Too often, those of us who listen to our troubled children in schools, medical, or social care institutions hear them state in matter-of-fact ways such matters as parent separation or abandonment, domestic abuse, violence, tragic deaths—even murder—of family members. It makes sense that too many of our children suffer nightmares and sleep loss associated normally with children caught in war zones. Of course they can’t concentrate in school, are easily offended, easily become bullies or victims of bullies, and often spend time in the principal’s or counselor’s office. These are the elements that make it difficult to find the good in some of our children.
And these most pressing needs of children have a key promise of relief in a simple reality: rebuild modern society on the history stemming back thousands of years of successful connections between humans and each other, all life forms, and their place on our planet earth. Modern society has departed too far from practicing and teaching these life connections. They dominated human social networking in our ancient tribal past, as reflected most profoundly in the most ancient writings and oral traditions of our species, especially our religious writings such as the Christian Bible. It’s time to return to our roots.
No doubt about it, troubled children are children of troubled adults who grew up with trouble.
We met with them, and simply shared our 3:46 We all do live together on this planet, and the elements and connections that make human life possible as we see it are disappearing one by one.
The technologies of peace come from the land we live on, and are available to us all. Collective heritage institute.
Many of these children in Big Horn County are part of one or more of the indigenous nations originally belonging in the territory of Montana. We, the providers of services for healing our children in Big Horn County, can access the ingredients to make enormous changes for the better through restoring that belonging, that connection power.
Evan Prichard: Restorative Justice.
One of the least rational responses to our children’s dilemma with life comes from those who govern our schools. They make us test cognitive development. They make us use cognitive test to determine school preparation for success in life. Our government says it’s a child’s right not to be left behind cognitively, but we all meekly allow grouping them into monocultures of age and developmental stratification. They want our kids to join confidently in a race to the top where all are can be winners, then we test to divide and rank them within schools, and further rank winners and losers among classrooms, among teachers, and among entire school districts, with funding loss and forced oversight threats. The “common core,” with all its improvements for children’s access to success, still endorses setting up barricades through cognitive testing to doom or destine children and their families to despair or privilege.
We have a rash of unsolved murders in Big Horn County, being brought to light by a family courageous enough to push for investigation of an FBI agent responsible for lack of progress on solving these crimes. Illnesses and injuries associated with the impact of adults in high stress converge on our health care facilities, doing their best to cope. Many at a young age engage in socially-accepted addictions to cope with the stress, overloading our facilities to handle additive dysfunction. Many families suffer from chronic occurrences of inadequate housing, clothing, or food. Mixed in with the media hype and tragedy is a national fear of violent crime impacting us in Big Horn County. Most seriously, Our children grow up seeing their loved ones caught in dysfunctional behavior causing pain, terror, and physical/emotional scars. It’s easy to join in, first watching addictive coping strategies in children’s and adult media in the home, and eventually finding peer confirmation of enough maturity to try chemical abuse to create an alternative happier universe.
A prime example of the mentality behind this national proliferation of fear is the “stand-your-ground” laws proliferating in hotbeds of racism, economic stress and violent crime outside Montana. Unlike Montana’s older law, restricted to an occupied structure (45-3-103. Use of force in defense of occupied structure), other states adopted stand-your-ground laws with loopholes leading to exoneration of criminal pursuit, assault and death. This social intervention experiment by many state governments has solved nothing because its foundation is fear rather than reason, the same kind of fear peddled in Big Horn County. So we have symptoms of the national mentality growing in our criminal justice system deployed to address the unsolved murders in Big Horn County. The job isn’t being done. Justice is not served. Tragedy and pain remain.
This is not simply a letter to urge vigorous investigation. It’s to address the mentality behind the neglect of victims and their families.
http://www.cpt.org/category/cptnet-categories/aboriginal-justice
I hope this isn't information overload! It's a tough topic, and needing attention.
David Graber
graberdb@gmail.com
Dave Graber