Howard Zehr’s Capital Introduction to Restorative Justice
On Oct. 16, 2008, the United States Sentencing Commission held [Restorative justice revolves around three basic principles:] a “working luncheon” in Washington D.C., where EMU restorative One is that crime and other kinds of wrongdoing create harm, justice professor Howard Zehr was the opening panelist. The following and harm always generates needs. That’s why victims have to be at is a much-abridged version of what he said. Zehr is one of six the center of restorative justice. appointed members on the commission’s Victims Advisory Group. Secondly, it has to do with obligations. All of our ancestors, I think, understood that when we harmed somebody, we had an It’s an honor to be here… I’ve been given the task of obligation. That obligation was to try to put it right to the extent giving a brief overview of restorative justice. we can. The first obligation is the offender’s, but the community Restorative justice as a field developed in the 1970s. It develmay have obligations as well. oped in specific communities in the United States and Canada as And the third principle is the principle of engagement. As seen an effort to deal particularly with three areas of concern. in some of the research, the more you involve victims and offendOne was the neglect of victims, and the traumatization or reers in the outcomes, the more satisfied they are, and the more traumatization they often experienced in the justice process. satisfactory the outcome. A second had to do with how we deal with offenders. We were Sometimes I say it really revolves around three questions. In convinced that offenders have deep denial processes, and that the the legal system, we tend to ask, “What laws were broken and legal system and the experience of prison tended to increase those who did it; what do they deserve?” Restorative justice is trying denial mechanisms. We wanted a way to hold them accountable, to think, well, there are three other questions that are important: in the sense of helping them to understand [the need] to take “Who has been harmed in this situation? What are their needs? some responsibility for what they were doing. Whose obligations are they?” And the third was the impact [on], and the involvement of, the When we first began, we began with more “minor crimes.” But community. We were concerned that justice not only did not today there are programs for the most serious kinds of crime and reduce the tensions around the crime in the community, but often many new applications. There are [restorative justice] programs in actually increased the conflicts and tensions around it. We felt every continent except Antarctica. that the community was often victimized and needed to have its One of the most exciting arenas is school disciplinary proceneeds addressed just like individual victims, but it also needed to dures. The schools are beginning to realize that basically we’re be engaged in this process, and it needed to step up to the plate mirroring the criminal justice system in our schools with zero and accept its responsibilities. tolerance, and so forth. It’s not working. And so more and more So those are the kind of concerns that led to restorative justice. school systems are adopting restorative disciplinary processes. The research has been encouraging. The latest meta studies from Sherman and Strang released in England looked at 36 studies For more information on restorative justice, read Howard Zehr’s from around the world and found high levels of victim satisfacpioneering book Changing Lenses – A New Focus for Crime tion, reduced recidivism by most offenders, [and] greater underand Justice, originally published in 1990, now in its third Englishstanding by victims and offenders of the other. They concluded language edition, along with editions in six other languages. For a that the research for restorative justice is much stronger than [for] quicker read, check out his Little Book of Restorative Justice (Good many of the innovations that we’re spending billions of dollars on. Books, 2002).
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peacebuilder fall/winter 2009
Photo by Pushpika Gangani Weerakoon