Restorative justice offers an opportunity, not a guarantee, for healing
Jan 05, 2010
from Lorenn Walker's blog:
“Not everyone’s wounds will heal” after being victimized by crime, an experienced judge says. This is true. Some people will never heal. Restorative justice is not a panacea that will heal every single person’s wounds suffered from being a crime victim. Restorative justice offers only the opportunity for healing, not a guarantee, but we know from an abundance of research that restorative justice helps many people.
....We need to provide opportunities for healing, which restorative justice offers. It does not guarantee every person who participates in a restorative practice will heal. It only offers the potential and opportunity for healing,
Recently, Ben Furman, a Finnish psychiatrist and I developed www.apologyletter.org, which provides a confidential program for people to prepare an apology based on restorative principals. We have recently revised the program, which now offers victims who do not get an apology, the opportunity to imagine an apology.
I found first hand benefits of the program by imagining an apology to a serious crime I suffered. Despite years of analyzing the crime and how it affected me, I thought I had healed from it completely, but when I imagined an apology I experienced a level of relief and understanding about what happened and how it affected me, which I had not known before. The unexpected benefits were a huge surprise to me.
The imagined apology is a powerful tool and shows again that we can apply restorative principles without engaging the person who hurt us. We can bring healing to ourselves. The opportunity exists.
The Opportunity is a gift
Working with the distraught mother was very difficult because of the depth of her pain. She was also one of the first victims that I had worked with so I was very afraid of making a mistake and causing more harm. The conference seemed to go well as both the mother and the offender talked about the young man who died and their grief. However, I there was still a lot of pain left when the conference was over.
A few months later, I called the mother to see how she was doing. She was okay, dealing with her grief on a day by day basis. I asked about her conferencing experience. She told me that even though it didn't bring closure and healing she was glad that she had gone through it. The experience was something that she needed to go through. It allowed her to tell the "offender" many of the things she had not been able to say in court. It was one step in her journey.
While it is not a panacea for the harm experienced in crime, restorative justice does offer both victims and offenders many opportunities. It might be healing or it might be a step in the journey towards those ends. I just feel that the opportunity is an very important gift that we can provide both victims and offenders.