Restorative Justice: Crime and Healing
Apr 20, 2010
From the article by Robert C. Koehler at IHaveNet.com.
"I have nowhere to talk about this except here in a prison setting," Peg said. "You are my community."
The circle grew close, intimate -- sacred -- as the three women spoke.
There were about 35 of us in all, sitting on hard plastic chairs. Twenty wore green: the inmates. The building was wrapped in razor wire. It was a maximum-security prison called Columbia Correctional Institution, in Portage, Wis. Built for 450 prisoners, it houses, two decades after it opened, about 900. The setting was old justice, but something new was happening.
Not all that new, maybe. Restorative Justice -- a multifaceted system of criminal justice and conflict resolution that puts healing and truth-telling at its core, not punishment, revenge or the culling out of humanity's undesirables -- has been around and evolving for about 20 years now. It's slowly gaining a foothold in court systems and schools around the world: It is part, I'm certain, of an invisible wave of change that is transforming the planet. Nothing about it is simple, but something precious beyond compare can emerge from the process. Suffering can abate, torn lives and broken communities can heal, good can come from bad.
But these were not pretty stories we were hearing: a rape, an armed robbery, the murder of three elderly women. The tellers, Peg, Debbie and Tanya -- the three angels, as many of the inmates started calling them -- had been victimized by these crimes, and each spoke in unrelenting detail about what happened.
The women spoke on Wednesday, day two of the three-day circle process I took part in last week, led by Jerry Hancock, a former defense and prosecuting attorney who became a United Church of Christ minister four years ago and now works under the auspices of the UCC Prison Ministry Project; and former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, who is currently a law professor at Marquette University. The week was part of a three-month Restorative Justice class at the prison, at the end of which the inmates who participated get a diploma, and changed lives.
...
These women spoke not with anger but almost lovingly. They were messengers. They had seen hell's landscape. Each talked of the impact of the crime on friends, family: the ripple effect. Debbie's marriage fell apart. Her children were traumatized. Tanya grew estranged from her parents. Peg held Mema's murder inside her for decades. There was simply no context in her life in which talking about it in all its detail was possible.
The context in which it was possible was Restorative Justice. We sat in a circle of equals. We listened and absorbed their words. Afterward, and over the next day, each person in the circle had chances to respond. The inmates began talking both about their own victims and their own pain. "Mema was with me all night," one of the men said on Thursday morning.
This is only a sliver of what happened over an extraordinary three days. We talked frankly and from the heart about crime; we listened to each other. Something shifted, though I can't say precisely what. Life felt sweet, fragile . . . precious.
"Be more than a survivor," Debbie urged. "Be a lifeguard."
Read the full article.
