Download Balanced and Restorative Justice

Principles of
Restorative Justice
The 4th Annual Child Placement Conference
Partnerships for Children and Families:
Building Interagency Alliances
Presented by:
Dee Bell, Project Administrator, Balanced and Restorative
Justice Project, Community Justice Institute, Florida
Atlantic University, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Accountability
A question?
• What is Peace?
Another Question?
• What is justice?
Current System Questions?
• Who committed the act and is it a crime?
• What laws were broken/what actions must
be taken?
• How will we punish the offender and
protect the victim?
What is Restorative Justice?
Restorative Justice is a process whereby the
parties with a stake in a particular offense
come together to resolve collectively how to
deal with the aftermath of the offense and
its implications for the future.”
Tony Marshall
Who are the parties?
• Victims- those who were harmed
• Offenders- those who caused harm
• Community- the place where the harm was
committed
We call the parties- the stakeholders
Restorative Justice:
• Is not a program.
• Is a mission or philosophical framework.
• Is a different way of responding to crime
and/or harm in families, communities and
systems especially the criminal justice
system.
Crime is harm.
Justice should be healing.
Crime Is More Than Lawbreaking
Crime HARMS:
Victims,
Communities,
and Offenders.
It also damages relationships.
Mutually Exclusive Interests
Offender
Interests
Victim
Interests
Community
Interests
Finding Common Ground
Offender
Victim
Community
Van Ness Principles
If crime is more than lawbreaking, then:
• Justice requires that we work to heal
victims, communities, and offenders who
have been injured by crime.
Principle 2
If crime is more than lawbreaking, then:
• Victims, communities and offenders should
have opportunities for active involvement in
the justice process as early and as fully as
possible.
Principle 3
If crime is more than lawbreaking, then:
• We must re-think the relative roles and
responsibilities of the government and the
community. Government is responsible for
preserving a just order and the community
for establishing a just peace.
Repairing Harm
Stakeholder Involvement
Community and Government
Role Transformation
Zehr’s Questions?
• What is the harm?
• What needs to be done to repair the harm?
• Who is responsible for the repair?
What is a “Balance?”
Balance is NOT: An equal
focus on punishment and
treatment.
Balancing Stakeholder Needs
Restorative Justice Stakeholders
Victim and family/support group
Offender and family/support group
Community
Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare Systems
Principle 1 - REPAIR
Justice requires that
we work to heal
victims, communities,
and offenders who
have been injured by
crime.
THREE RJ PRINCIPLES
Defining “REPAIR”
Three dimensions:
1. Fixing What Is Broken/Damaged – Compensating
Those Harmed
2. Reintegration of Victim and Offender with
Community
3. Relationship Building
- Connections made or strengthened between
victim/offender/community
REPAIR AND VICTIM
NEEDS
“ Victims frequently want longer time for
offenders because we haven’t given
them anything else. Or because we don’t
ask, we don’t know what they want. So
[the system] gives them door Number
One or Two, when what they really want
is behind Door Number 3 or 4.”
~ Mary Achilles
REPAIR AND
OFFENDER NEEDS
Restorative Accountability
Definition:
The obligation of the offender to
“make it right” with victims and
victimized communities.
Accountability is NOT:
Punishment
Being responsible to the
juvenile justice system
or juvenile justice
professionals
Restorative Accountability
“How Do We Know It When We See It?”
The sanctioning process produces
accountability when it ensures that:
Offenders take responsibility
for the crime and understand
the hurt caused to the victim.
Restorative Accountability
“How Do We Know It When We See It?”
Offenders take action to make
amends to the victim by restoring
the loss.
Victims and communities have an active
role in the sanctioning process by
recommending obligations and by
monitoring, mentoring, and
supporting compliance.
Restorative Accountability
“How Do We Know It When We See It?”
Communities support offenders who
earn it by taking responsibility for
completing obligations.
All stakeholders and the
system place emphasis on
the wrong done and the
obligation to make it right.
REPAIR AND
COMMUNITY NEEDS
“…communities should not measure the
success of any…community based
initiative upon what happens to the
offender…
(Rather, they should measure)…the
impact of community based initiatives on
victims, strengthening families, building
connections within the community, on
enforcing community values, on
mobilizing community action to make the
community safer…”
~ Judge Barry Stuart
Reconnecting…
Restorative justice
reconnects
Offender
Crime weakens
relationships
Offender
How Do You Repair
The Harm?
Asking Different Questions

What is the harm?

What needs to be done to repair
the harm?

Who is responsible for this
repair?
Principle 2 - Involvement
Victims, communities
and offenders should
have opportunities for
active involvement in
the justice process as
early and as fully as
possible.
THREE RJ PRINCIPLES
Restorative Justice Conferencin
Models
Increasing Stakeholder
Decisionmaking Inputs:
Family Group Conferencing
Reparative or Accountability Boards
Sentencing and Peacemaking Circles
Victim Offender Dialogue (Mediation)
Community Conferencing
Merchant Accountability Boards
Restorative Justice Theories-inuse
Interpersonal Dialogue
Empowering and giving “voice” to
victims and other Stakeholders
Gaining information and reassurance
Apology and acknowledgement of
harm and wrongdoing
Human connection
Expression of feeling/emotions –
process over outcome
Principle 3 –
Changing Community/
System Roles & Relationships
We must re-think the relative
role and responsibilities of the
government and the
community. Government is
responsible for preserving
order. The community is
responsible for establishing
peace.
THREE RJ PRINCIPLES
“Why Community?”
“Crime (control and prevention) should never be the
sole, or even primary business of the State if real
differences are sought in the well being of individuals,
families and communities.
The structure, procedures, and evidentiary rules of the
formal criminal justice process coupled with most justice
officials’ lack of knowledge and connection to (the
parties) effected by crime, preclude the state from
acting alone to achieve transformative changes.”
~ Judge Barry Stuart
“Children grow up in communities, not programs.
Development is most strongly influence by those
with the most intensive, long-term contact with
children and youth – family, informal networks,
community organizations, churches, synagogues,
temple, mosques and schools. Development is
not achieved only through services, but also
through supports, networks and opportunities.
“if you are dealing with people whose
relationships have been built on power and
abuse, you must actually show them, then give
them the experience of, relationships based on
respect…[so]…the healing process must involve
a healthy group of people, as opposed to single
therapists. A single therapist cannot, by
definition, do more than talk about healthy
relationships.”
What IS “Community”?
 Geographically defined units (cities, towns)
 Families and extended families
 Religious congregations
 Schools and colleges
 Workplace
 Union locals
 Clubs, lodges, hobby groups
 Professional groups
 Political groups or parties
 Voluntary groups, e.g., youth service organizations
 Neighborhoods
From: John Gardner, On Leadership
“Why is the Community
Role Important Now?”
(Formal justice system procedures)
“deprive people of opportunities to
practice skills of apology and
forgiveness, or reconciliation,
restitution, and reparation . . . The
modern state appears to have
deprived civil society of opportunities
to learn important political and social
skills.
~ David Moore
Defining Community Building
Three Objectives:
1. Values Clarification
2. Norm Affirmation
3. Citizens increase skills in repairing
harm, informal social control, and social
support
Participation denied breeds apathy.
Apathy breeds suspicion.
Suspicion breeds cynicism.
Cynicism prevails.
Conversely,
Participation builds investment.
Investment builds a sense of ownership.
A sense of ownership builds a sense of
personal responsibility.
A sense of personal responsibility for the
well-being of the community prevails.
Community Justice Core Questions
1. What can we do to build a sense of
community and prevent crime from
happening in the first place?
2. When a community member violates the trust
of another, the peace of the community is
broken. What can we do to restore the victim,
the community, and the offender’s place in
the community?
“Community Justice”…
All variants of crime prevention and justice
activities that explicitly include the community in
their processes and set the enhancement of
community quality of like as an explicit goal.
Community justice is rooted in the actions that
citizens, community organizations, and the
criminal justice system can take to control crime
and social disorder.
Community
Justice
Community
Building &
Prevention
Balanced and
Restorative
Justice
Community Justice Core
Principles
Sense of Community:
People who share a strong sense of
community are far less likely to violate
the trust of other community members.
Preventive and corrective measures should,
therefore result in citizens gaining
stronger sense of being connected to the
community.
Investment:
Participation builds investment.
Investment builds a sense of responsibility.
People who share a sense of responsibility will
go to great effort to see their ideas succeed.
Citizens, crime victims, and offenders who
participate in building a safer community can
be predicted to share a strong investment in the
outcome of their efforts.
Reparation:
Crime breaks the peace of the victim and the
community.
The justice process should focus on restoring the
peace for the victim and the community.
The offender carries the burden to repair the
harm.
The primary role of government should be to
ensure that these reparative expectations are
fulfilled.
Earned Redemption:
Offenders who have worked to repair
harm to victim and community
should be afforded the opportunity to
participate as a responsible,
productive member of the
community.
Why IT Works
Grounded/Community Theory in the Case of
Neighborhood accountability boards
“We aren’t getting paid to do this.”
“We can exercise the authority that parents have lost.”
“We live in their community.”
“We give them input into the contract.”
“We are a group of adult neighbors who care about them.”
“They hear about the harm
from real human beings –
us and the victims.”
“We follow up.”
Restorative Justice Theories-inuse
Community Healing/Capacity Building
Collective responsibility for crime and repair/healing
Inclusion and connection important in their own right
The resolution and healing lies in the group
Sanctioning, rehabilitation, community safety
interventions seamless and integrated – blurred
distinctions between quality of life, community
needs, criminal justice and social justice
Emphasis on private and parochial control and
mutual support vs. professionals and justice system
– “community as driver”
Changing the System
and Professional Role
and Focus
Restorative Justice: Redefining the
Government’s Role
Traditional
Justice System
Restorative
Justice System
(Justice Intervention)
(Justice Intervention)
Offender
Services
Community
Offender Victim
Surveillance
Facilitation
Sanction
Community Building
Community & The Justice System:
The Changing Relationship
Justice system operates separately from the community
Justice system provides more information to the community
about its activities.
Justice system provides information to the community about
its activities and asks for information from the community.
Justice system asks for guidance from the community,
recognizes a need for community help, and places more
activities in the community.
Justice system follows community leadership.
“ In nature,
nothing
grows from
the top
down.”
The Chandler Center of
Community Leadership
A Model for Restorative Systemic
Change
• A restorative response to every offense no
matter where it is addressed in the system or
community
• A restorative way of accomplishing core
system goals: safety, rehabilitation,
sanctioning, victim services, prevention etc.
What’s NEW about Restorative
Justice?
NEW Values
NEW Stakeholders
New Decisionmaking Processes
NEW Performance Objectives
NEW Programs and Practices
NEW Staff Roles, Resource Allocation, and
Management Approaches
So how does it work in your
job?
Let’s talk !
“So we make mistakes – can you say – you (the current
system) don’t make mistakes…if you don’t think you do,
walk through our community, every family will have
something to teach you…By getting involved, by all of us
taking responsibility, it is not that we won’t make
mistakes…
But we would be doing it together, as a community
instead of having it done for us. We need to find peace
within our lives…in our communities. We need to make
real differences in the way people act and the way we
treat others…Only if we empower them and support
them can they break out of this trap…”
~ Rose Couch, Community Justice Coordinator