Restorative Justice
With over 1,000 programs in North America, over 2,000 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and initiatives underway in Central and South America, Asia and Africa, RJ has emerged as a social movement for justice reform. Almost every U.S. state is implementing RJ at state, regional and/or local levels and a growing number of states have officially adopted RJ principles and policies, with judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys leading the way. The American Bar Association has issued a formal endorsement and guidelines for application of RJ programs and principles.
Rising rates of incarceration and corrections budgets have challenged the long-standing assumption that punishment (or retribution) is the only way or the best way to respond to crime. Our traditional system of punitive/retributive justice asks three questions: who did it, what laws were broken, and what should be done to punish (or in some cases, treat) the offender? Instead of viewing crime primarily as a violation of law - requiring punishment, RJ emphasizes one fundamental fact: crime harms people, communities and relationships. A restorative justice inquiry poses three very different questions. First, what harm resulted from the crime? Second, what needs to be done to “make it right” or repair the harm? Third, who is responsible for the repair?
Traditionally, offender accountability has been viewed as compliance with program rules or as taking one’s punishment. But accepting punishment is passive and requires no responsibility or affirmative acts from the offender. A RJ approach holds the offender accountable by facilitating and enforcing reparative agreements, including restitution. RJ recognizes that we must give offenders the opportunity to right their wrongs and redeem themselves, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the community. Victims and the community must have the opportunity to take active roles in the resolution of crime. RJ views our crime problem as a community matter that can never be adequately addressed by delegating the sole responsibility to police, courts and correctional systems.
RJ is not any one program, but rather, a different paradigm for understanding and responding to issues of crime and justice. RJ takes its most familiar forms in victim-offender mediation/dialogue (VOM) programs and victim-offender reconciliation programs (VORP). Other RJ responses to crime include family group conferencing, community sentencing circles, neighborhood accountability boards, reparative probation, restitution programs, restorative community service, victim and community impact statements and victim awareness panels.
VOM and VORP programs bring offenders face to face with the victims of their crimes, with the assistance of a mediator or facilitator - often a community volunteer. Specialized training is required to ensure the safety, integrity and success of the process. (Program directors, staff, volunteers and board members are often attorney-mediators.) Victim participation is always voluntary; offender participation is voluntary in most programs.
In mediation/dialogue, crime is personalized as offenders learn the human consequences of their actions, and victims have the opportunity to speak their minds and their feelings to the one who most ought to hear them, contributing to the victim’s healing. Victims get answers to haunting questions that only the offender can answer. The most commonly asked questions are “Why did you do this to me? Was this my fault? Could I have prevented this? Were you stalking or watching me?” Victims commonly report a new peace of mind, even when the answers to their questions were worse than they had feared.
Offenders take meaningful responsibility for their actions by mediating a restitution agreement with the victim to restore the victims’ losses in whatever ways possible. Restitution may be monetary or symbolic; it may consist of work for the victim, meaningful community service or other actions that contribute to a sense of justice between the victim, others affected by the crime, and the offender.
VOM/VORP programs have been mediating meaningful justice between crime victims and offenders for about 30 years and are supported by a substantial body of research. Remarkably consistent statistics from a cross-section of the North American programs show that about two-thirds of the cases referred to programs result in a face-to-face mediation. More than 95 percent of the cases mediated result in a written restitution agreement. More than 90 percent of those restitution agreements are completed within one year. In contrast, the rate of payment of court-ordered restitution is typically only from 20 to 30 percent. Recent research has shown that juvenile offenders who participate in VOM/VORP subsequently commit fewer and less serious offenses than their counterparts in the traditional juvenile justice system.
Most VOM/VORP programs limit their work to property offenses or offenses of lesser violence, committed by juveniles. The fast-growing trend is to expand the application to adult offenders and crimes of severe violence, including homicides. In juvenile offenses and in mind crimes committed by adults, RJ processes may be substituted for, or supplementary to court action. In crimes of severe violence, RJ has seldom been a substitute for prosecution; RJ processes have been used to create more meaningful sentencing for offenders and their victims.
VOM/VORP is not appropriate for every crime, every victim or every offender. Individual, preliminary meetings between mediator and victim, mediator and offender are essential for careful screening and assessment according to established criteria. Even if not appropriate for mediation/dialogue, the resolution of most crimes can benefit from some application of RJ principles.
For more information about restorative justice, see Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP) Information and Resource Center http://www.vorp.com; Victim Offender Mediation Association http://www.voma.org; International Centre for Justice and Reconciliation http://www.restorativejustice.org; Center for Restorative Justice and Peace-Making http://ssw.che.umn.edu/rjp or these print resources: Restoring Justice, Daniel Van Ness and Karen Strong (Anderson Publishing Co., 1997); Restorative Justice: A Vision for Healing and Change, Susan Sharpe (Edmonton Victim Offender Mediation Society, 1998); Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims, Howard Zehr (Herald Press, 2001).
