Humane, Restorative Justice and Reconciliation

 

Restorative justice is a natural, proven form of justice that seeks to restore victims and offenders to whole, contributing members of society. It emphasizes preventing additional harm and repairing the harm caused or revealed by criminal behavior. It is best accomplished through humane cooperative processes that include all stakeholders.

Paraphrased from “Restorative Justice web site, RestorativeJustice.org”

 

The dictionary definition of “reconciliation” includes the restoration of friendly relations, making or showing to be compatible or making someone accept a disagreeable thing. ORIGIN Latin reconciliare, from conciliare 'bring together'. In this document we are referring mainly to reconciliation between and among individuals not “national reconciliation.”

 

The legal definition of “humane” is: Kind, tender, compassionate. Disposed to eliminate the cause of suffering of man or beast. Humane differs from the ordinary use of “merciful,” in that it expresses active endeavors to find and relieve suffering, and especially to prevent it, while “merciful” expresses the disposition to spare one the suffering which might be inflicted. Ballentine’s Law Dictionary.

 

The Geneva Convention requires that the people of an occupied country, detainees, and prisoners of war be treated humanely. Obviously, harsh interrogation techniques, abuse and torture does not constitute humane treatment.

 

Being humane and providing opportunities for restorative justice and reconciliation will help identify those individuals who should be confined and better protect the public from criminal behavior than current criminal justice programs do.

 

However, individuals accused of crimes and prisoners in the U. S., are in general, not being treated humanely. This is not the only problem with the U. S. Criminal Justice System.

 

Following is paraphrased from a description of the proposed National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 introduced in the Senate on March 26, 2009 by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia.

 

1. With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses 25% of the world's reported prisoners.

2. Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980. Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.

3. Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S.

4. Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.

 

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

 

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

 

Humane, restorative justice and reconciliation as outlined here can play a major role in fixing the system.

 

Restorative justice, normally utilized after a perpetrator is found guilty, should be applied in all phases of the criminal justice process and begin as rapidly as possible to prevent additional crimes being committed.

 

The U.S. officials and their agents have violated and continue to violate the rights of many individuals. Individuals who have been illegally detained, abused or tortured by U.S. officials are unlikely to be threats to the U.S. or turn to terrorism once released if they participate in a restorative justice process, receive justice reparations and sincere counseling.

 

If restorative justice is applied after an arrest or summons is initiated and before a grand jury is impaneled, the need for lengthy indictments and trials could be reduced. This would allow contrite perpetrators who make amends, and victims who are willing to forgive, get on with their lives sooner.

 

Alfred Adler (1870-1937), the renown psychologist and founder of the school of individual psychology & Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), one of the most famous American lawyers, civil libertarians and advocate of the downtrodden, provide outstanding insights into criminal behavior, serious flaws in criminal justice systems and measures that should be taken to help provide restorative justice.

 

Alfred Adler devotes chapter nine of his book What Life Could Mean to You, to Crime and its Prevention. Everyone interested in restorative justice should read at least this chapter. Pertinent points paraphrased from this chapter include:

 

     Corporal punishment is ineffective because it only confirms to criminals that society is hostile and impossible to co-operate with. Something of this sort happened to individuals who became criminals, perhaps, at school. They were not trained to co-operate and so they did their work badly, or misbehaved in class. ... They feel that people are against them. ... The children lose whatever shreds of confidence they had. They are not interested in their schoolwork, their teachers or their school friends. They begin to play truant and to hide where they cannot be found. In these places they find other children who have had the same experience and have taken the same road. ... , since they are not interested in the social demands of life, they see these other children as their friends and society in general as their enemy. These people like them and they feel better in their company. It is in this way that thousands of children join criminal gangs, ... if in later life, we treat them in the same way, this will only bear out their view that we are their enemies and only criminals are their friends.

 

     There is no reason at all why such children should be defeated by the tasks of life. We should never allow them to lose hope and we could prevent this very easily if we organized our schools so that such children were given confidence and courage.

 

     Corporal punishment is ineffective for other reasons too. Many criminals do not value their lives very highly. Some of them are very near suicide at certain moments of their lives. Corporal or even capital punishment hold no terrors for them.

 

     ... No one need be defeated by the problems of life. Criminals have chosen the wrong way of dealing with them; me must show them where they have made the wrong choice and why, and we must develop in them the courage to be interested in others and co-operate.

 

     I would like to emphasize that this ability to co-operate must be learned. There is no question of its being hereditary. There is a potential for co-operation, and this potential must be regarded as inborn, but it is common to every human being, and to be developed it must be trained and exercised. All other points of view about crime seem to me irrelevant, unless we can produce evidence of people who were trained in co-operation but still became criminals.

 

     The value of co-operation can be taught in the same way that geography can be taught, for it is a truth and we can always teach the truth. ... All our problems require a knowledge of co-operation.

 

     ... We know, therefore, exactly what we must do: we must train criminals in co-operation.

 

     ... we ought to make it possible for everyone who wants to work to secure a job. This would be the only way to realize the demands of life in our society so that a great part of humankind would not lose the last remnants of their ability to co-operate There is no question at all that if this were done the number of criminals would go down.

 

     We should also avoid in our society everything that can act as a temptation to criminals or to poor and destitute people. If great extremes of poverty and luxury are apparent, it offends those who are badly off and incites them to envy. We should, therefore, cut down on ostentation: it is not necessary to flaunt one’s wealth.

 

     ... Criminals should never be threatened, and it would be much better if we were more discreet and did not mention the names of criminals or give them so much publicity.

 

     It would be very helpful if we increased our efforts to improve our crime-solving record. As far as I can see, at least forty per cent of criminals, and perhaps far more, escape detection, and this fact is always at the back of every criminal’s mind. ... It is also important that criminals should not be humiliated or challenged either in the prison itself or after they leave prison. An increase in the number of probation officers would be useful, if the right type of person is appointed; and probation officers themselves should be taught about the problems of society and the importance of co-operation.

 

In his book, The Story of My Life, first published in 1932, Clarence Darrow outlines the serious problems we have with our criminal justice system, i.e. On my return from Europe I was deeply grieved and somewhat surprised to see the cruel results of the steady and unscientific campaign against crime. This was well under way before I left America. The whole movement was directly in conflict with modern psychology and, in fact, with all the teachings of science.

 

Darrow also provides an outstanding strategy for restorative justice: All of those who for any reason cannot or do not adjust themselves to important rules [i.e. have violated a serious law] should be examined by experts to find out why it is and what can be done; if need be they should be kept under proper and sufficient inspection. They should be helped in every way possible. Regardless of what they have done they should be released when it seems safe; meantime they should be kept under supervision in kindness and sympathy instead of harshness. It is entirely possible that a person guilty of homicide could safely be set free in a short time, and that a sneak-thief or a beggar could never be changed or cured or released. Each individual should be considered by himself. To subject every inmate of prisons to the same treatment is like giving every hospital patient the same doses of medicine, or the same surgical operation, and, of course, however absurd this might seem to those who do not think, the time will come when something like this will take the place of the archaic, costly, and pernicious system that has long since been outworn.

 

Humane, restorative justice and reconciliation should be used today, because this:

 

•    Is the right and proper thing to do

•    Will not in anyway detract from the severity of crimes committed, excuse or exonerate anyone who has committed a serious crime or cause the criminal justice system to fail to protect the public.

•    Can be utilized to reduce the huge number of people the US has in its prisons.

•    Can make the urgent needed improvements in the U. S. Criminal Justice System

 

For additional information about restorative justice go to the Restorative Justice web sites at http://www.restorativejustice.org and the Prison Fellowship International web site at http://www.pfi.org/