Denise Breton and Stephen Lehman. 2001. West Chester Pennsylvania: Chrysalis Books. ISBN: ISBN 0-87785-300-2. 

Reviewed By Lynette Parker

Breton and Lehman explore the traditional philosophical definitions of justice, and propose an alternative understanding. Leaning heavily on indigenous and spiritualist traditions as well as the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, they suggest a holistic model of justice that informs  everyday life and relationships at all levels.     

For Breton and Lehman, a society's understanding of justice impacts it in many ways, with the criminal justice system being only one example. This understanding of justice informs the

• making of life decisions  

• building of relationships

• designing of societal structures.  

For this reason, the philosophy used to understand justice has a much larger impact than designing the criminal justice system.  

Their first step in exploring a “new” justice philosophy is to outline and critique the current thinking, the reward-punishment model. Breton and Lehman claim that this model goes beyond mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws to inform the way children are raised and educated, how employers deal with employees, and how we relate to each other.  They critique this model as ignoring the context surrounding conflict situations and creating artificial standards for success and failure which judges each person by a single standard regardless of individual circumstances. This means that individuals are encouraged to seek goals determined by society’s definition of success instead of the person’s own talents and preferences.  

An example would be of an artist going into the medical field because it pays well instead of following their true course into art. Breton and Lehman refer to this as “rejecting what is ours to do.” They point out that external rewards are not always given to the hardest working or most talented worker, but to those best able to manipulate the system. This applies as well in the criminal justice system where standards of law can hinder creativity in finding solutions and ignore the context surrounding an offense.  Furthermore, power and influence can affect the response to offending behavior. For these reasons, the “reward-punishment” model often ignores and perpetuates trauma.  

Breton and Lehman then describe a system that would “support what is ours to do”. Restorative justice is described as a creative process opening possibilities for understanding and healing. By considering the context surrounding a crime (or any conflict) and allowing the affected parties  to reach an understanding of each other, this model opens the door toward healing of trauma and the creation of a more just society.   

The authors build their justice model on the ideas of change and interconnectedness, on the nature of system processes instead of individualistic rewards-punishments.  They summarize doing justice in the following four statements:

• We do justice to ourselves by engaging our whole being, outer and inner, seen and unseen;

• We do justice to others by honoring their whole being, our connectedness to them, and our whole mutual-blessings dynamics;

• We do justice to our communities and society by giving them what is outs to give; and

• We do justice to justice itself by no longer reducing it to external reward-punishment terms, instead letting it operate as a force for soul, transformation, happiness, and good.

 

May 2002