Redeeming a Prison Society by Levad Amy

Author:Levad, Amy [Amy Levad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4514-6512-9
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

On Restorative Justice

Of course, the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation cannot be instituted as the central practice of a modern Western penal system. The discussion of the previous chapter reveals how this sacrament is rooted in ecclesial community. We cannot simply translate Penance and Reconciliation into a pluralistic society that does not maintain the same religious and communal commitments that ground this sacrament. Nevertheless, similarities between early Christian penitential practices and modern restorative justice practices may provide theological support for the latter among Catholics. In Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration, the U.S. bishops seem to recognize the analogy between the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation and practices of restorative justice, but they do not elaborate upon these connections or offer significant justification of restorative justice from a theological perspective.

Restorative justice has been a growing movement in criminal justice reform since the 1970s. Advocates have defined restorative justice in a variety of ways, and several issues arise when trying to come up with a satisfactory definition.[4] First, the term has been used to describe an assortment of practices that do not necessarily bear much resemblance to each other. Among the practices called “restorative justice” are victim-offender mediation and dialogue (also commonly known as victim-offender reconciliation), family-group conferencing, citizen- and neighborhood-accountability boards, truth and reconciliation commissions, community conferencing, and numerous hybrids of each of these. Despite the differences among these practices, they tend to share “a wide array of face-to-face non-adversarial decision-making dialogue encounters between victim, offender, and community members in response to specific crimes and/or incidents of harm.”[5] Second, because of lack of clarity about the meaning of “restorative justice,” the term has frequently been used to describe practices that seem neither restorative nor just. Although many states have adopted restorative justice language in their juvenile justice legislation, for example, it is worth noting that “in some states . . . [it] was passed as part of the same juvenile justice legislation that contained more punitive provisions mandating expanded transfer to criminal court.”[6] In some instances, “restorative justice” seems to have been used as a moniker for nonrestorative practices. Finally, a movement for restorative justice has arisen at the same time as several other alternative conceptions of justice that sometimes overlap and sometimes conflict with restorative justice, especially “community justice” and “transformative justice.”

While some restorative justice advocates would disagree, for the purposes here, the definition of restorative justice provided by criminologists Gordon Bazemore and Lode Walgrave will suffice. They have formulated a definition of restorative justice as “every action that is primarily oriented to doing justice by repairing the harm that has been caused by crime.”[7] Each term within this definition requires elaboration. Bazemore and Walgrave, like most restorative justice advocates, view crime principally not as a violation of the law, but as a violation of relationships by offenders when they cause harm to others. The harm caused may include “material losses, physical injuries, psychological consequences, relational problems, and social dysfunctions.”[8] The people affected by criminal harm are, foremost, the direct victims of crime, but also members of the community in which the crime occurred.

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