TOWARD RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
What might happen if victims met with their victimizers or people closely related to their offen- ders? Could anything constructive come from these encounters? A social movement advocating restorative justice believes victims would be better off if they explored the healing potential of such meetings in order to get past the understandable sorrow and bitterness that invades and then engulfs their lives. From the standpoint of survi- vorology, a face-to-face encounter with the offender might be an important step that helps the victim to heal emotionally and to rebuild a shattered life. Consider what seems to have been achieved in these cases:
A 16-year-old girl has an affair with a married 38- year-old man who owns an auto repair shop. The love-struck teenager shoots the man’s wife in the face. The young assailant is quickly captured, pleads guilty to first-degree assault, and is sentenced to a 5- to 15-year prison term. The wife survives, but the bullet remains lodged in her brain, interfering with her eating and drinking and causing her constant pain. The husband pleads guilty to statutory rape and serves six months in jail before becoming a talk show host. Nearly seven years later, the shooter comes up for parole. She tells the woman she tried to kill, “It was my fault, and I’m sorry.” The wife recom- mends to the parole board that they release her, and they do. Years later, the wife undergoes successful facial reconstructive surgery but declines an invitation to “reunite” at a staged event with her former hus- band and former attacker who continue to lead trou- bled lives and periodically engage in publicity stunts. “I don’t want to go back there with those two …
I have moved on with my life,” she declares. She remarries, writes a best-selling book about her experiences, and speaks to college audiences about avoiding entanglements in toxic relationships. (Associated Press, 1999a; Winfrey, 2006; and Buttafuoco, 2012)
A 78-year-old widow is visiting the grave of her husband of sixty years, who died two weeks earlier. A man takes advantage of her preoccupation and runs off with her handbag containing $700. But the purse snatcher is quickly caught and his mug shot is shown on the local TV station as part of a news story about the cruel crime. A 15-year-old boy recognizes the man in the picture as his father, who abandoned the family when he was a toddler and is periodically in and out of jail. The father occasion- ally drifts back into his son’s life, and he just gave him $250 in cash to pay for a special long-awaited trip. The son contacts the widow and they meet in a church parking lot. He says he is sorry for what happened. “If I didn’t apologize, who would?” he tells her. Then he insists that she take the $250, confiding that “I’m not sure if it was yours … but I’d feel bad if I didn’t give it to you.” She takes the cash but quickly hands it right back to the boy, saying, “I want you to take your trip.… I feel more like my life still has a purpose,” the elderly widow declares. (Hartman, 2013)
A 19-year-old shoots a 21-year-old police officer, permanently damaging his right arm. The assailant is released on bail but flees to Canada and lives a conventional life, becoming a husband, father, and librarian. Thirty-five years later the authorities arrest and extradite him. Facing up to 23 years in prison, his attorney negotiates an unusual plea with the officer’s approval. He is sentenced to 30 days in jail, two years on probation, and to make restitution payments that will add up to $250,000 to a foun- dation that assists families of injured police officers. The officer declares, “Something good had to come of this. The easy way out would have been to have a trial, and cost this county hundreds of thousands of
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dollars … and cost the prison system hundreds of thousands of dollars.” (Einhorn, 2008)
A young woman is mortally wounded from a shot- gun blast by her distraught and suicidal fiancé. Her deeply religious parents make the gut-wrenching decision to remove her from life support and then make a highly unusual request of the prosecutor: to allow them and their minister to meet with the fiancé and his parents. The prosecutor reluctantly agrees. The group assembles during a pre-plea conference, which is normally limited to the prosecutor and the defense attorney so that they can try to negotiate a mutually acceptable resolution of a case. The mur- dered woman’s parents are determined to transform her demise into the seeds of something transcendent. They declare their forgiveness at the outset but then ask tough questions, including, “How could this have possibly happened? What were our daughter’s last words? How can you redeem yourself?” The fiancé confesses his guilt, and accepts the possibility of a lengthy period of incarceration, followed by parole with anger management and domestic vio- lence counseling as well as an obligation to speak to students about dating violence and to perform vol- unteer work that the young woman would have done. The victim’s father suggests a sentence of 10 to 15 years in prison, and her mother urges no less than 5 but no more than 15 years. The prosecutor takes their views into consideration, and several weeks later offers the defense attorney a relatively lenient sentence of a minimum of 20 years, followed by all the agreed-upon community service obliga- tions. The young killer accepts the negotiated plea. (Baliga, 2012)
A reclusive 20-year-old with mental problems kills his mother, arms himself from her arsenal of military-style weapons, drives to a nearby elemen- tary school, barges in, and proceeds to gun down 20 pupils and 6 educators before killing himself as the police arrive. The parents of one of the slain first graders ask to meet with the gunman’s father, explaining that they want to be able to draw some
lessons from the killing spree that claimed the life of their 6-year-old daughter, and that his cooperation was vital since he was the only person who could answer the questions that troubled them. During the emotional get-together that lasts for over an hour, they share their condolences and talk about their deceased children. Afterward, the father of the murdered 6-year-old refers to his two remaining daughters, ages 3 and 5, declaring, “… anger towards somebody or trying to point blame at anybody seems like a waste of time and energy that we can use to be better parents to our girls.” (AP, 2013)
Even in these jaded and cynical times, when calls for rehabilitating criminals are greeted with skepticism and demands for severe punishment receive enthusiastic support, a new approach that assumes the best about people is gaining ground. It is attracting a growing proportion of victims who don’t want to use their leverage within the legal system to make their offenders suffer. They are taking advantage of the chance to actively par- ticipate in a process whose goals are victim recov- ery, offender sensitization to the harm caused, a cessation of mutual hostilities, and a sense of clo- sure, in which both parties put the incident behind them and rebuild their lives.
These are the aims of restorative justice, a rapidly evolving way of reconceptualizing the crime problem that many enthusiastic adherents find promising. It draws upon nonpunitive methods of peacemaking, mediation, negotiation, dispute resolution, conflict management, and constructive engagement. These strategies could bring about mutual understanding, offender empathy for the victim’s plight, victim sensitivity about the causes of the offender’s problems, and lasting settlements that reconcile tensions between the two parties as well as within their community. But frustration with inaction and gridlock is causing some activists to abandon their efforts at reforming the bureau- cratic process and to redirect their energies into developing a venue for informal justice where injured parties can be central figures who play hands-on roles and take charge of the way their
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cases are resolved. These activists urge victims to arrange to meet their offenders face-to-face in the presence of mediators, demand an explanation, and insist that the wrongdoers take responsibility and make amends for the damage and hardships they have inflicted.