Dan Van Ness is executive director of the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, a program of Prison Fellowship International.  He has been active in criminal justice issues for over 30 years, as a lawyer, advocate, writer and teacher. 

Dan lived in and practiced poverty law for six years on the West Side of Chicago in the late 1970s. In 1981 he moved to Washington DC to work with Prison Fellowship (USA), a faith-based organization working with prisoners, ex-prisoners, victims and their families.  While there, he established and directed its criminal justice reform affiliate, Justice Fellowship.  During his 11 years with Justice Fellowship, he organized lobbying activities on sentencing reform and victim rights issues, researched and wrote on restorative justice and helped start a victim assistance organization.   

After leaving Justice Fellowship and completing additional graduate study, he taught law in Detroit and criminology at the University of Malta where he lived for two years while helping the government overhaul its correctional system.  

Dan directs the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation in providing programs, training and project management to advance the worldwide implementation of restorative justice.  He led a development group in designing and implementing the Sycamore Tree Project®, a program that brings groups of victims into prisons for a series of meetings with groups of unrelated prisoners.  He has adapted that for use with perpetrators and survivors of genocide in Rwanda to prepare them for the gacaca process.  

Dan represents PFI at international gatherings on restorative justice, and was a principal architect of the Declaration of Basic Principles on the Use of Restorative Justice Programmes in Criminal Matters, which was endoresed by the United Nations in 2002.

He has written a number of books and papers on criminal justice issues.  His most recent books are Restoring Justice: An Introduction to Restorative Justice, 3rd Edition (2006) co-authored with Karen Strong, and Handbook of Restorative Justice (2006), co-edited with Gerry Johnstone.  He is an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University School of Law in California and at Hangdon Global University in the Republic of Korea.  He has spoken and conducted training on restorative justice throughout the world.

Dan is the General Editor of Restorative Justice Online.

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There are hard questions about the feasibility and comprehensiveness of restorative justice that may never be answered until serious attempts are made to construct a restorative system. 

Comprehensiveness is an issue because some conditions have traditionally been viewed as prerequisites for a restorative response (admission of guilt, willingness to participate, ability to make reparation, etc.). What happens when those conditions are not present? How could a system respond restoratively with all serious crimes as well as all minor ones? With offenders and victims who are unwilling or unable to participate, as well as to those who are willing and able? With cases in which the accused denies guilt?

A fully restorative justice system must be capable of effectively and restoratively addressing the myriad conditions and issues that are normal and routine in the administration of justice.

The second issue has to do with the feasibility of such a system. The "criminal justice system" is not a system at all, but a collection of responses by public and private agencies, often in the context of conflicting goals and interests. Is it reasonable to suggest that a system with restorative values and norms could be implemented when so many different players must be involved?  

Furthermore, political concerns are (and should be) of great importance to policymakers. How might a policymaker consider alternative strategies for introducing and implementing a restorative system?

Finally, can a restorative system handle high volumes of cases efficiently yet restoratively? Not simply the current high volume of criminal cases (which represent only a fraction of all crimes because they are only those in which accused offenders have been identified and caught) but also all those other crimes in which there are victims, but no identified offenders.

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Leading Edge. Dan is currently leading a project to design a model restorative justice system that could deal with all matters currently sent through the criminal justice system.  Such a system will need to:

• Repair the harm done

• Involve all the stakeholders

• Transform the government/ community relationship

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Reach Dan Van Ness at  dvanness@pfi.org

 

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