How Do We Restore or Transform Justice? by Polly Riddims, Critical Resistance, Baltimore

Those who are working to dismantle the prison industrial complex must have alternative ways to deal with issues of crime, public safety, conflict, injury, and victimization. Prison abolition is a long-term goal, or part of a vision of a better world. If we human beings can live with such compassion as not to cage and punish other human beings, and create systems of equity and sustainability that will abolish the “need” for prisons, then we will have reached our goal. We know this is not possible in any immediate future, and may take generations to achieve. Yet if we believe in this possibility, our work will guide us to that goal. We can work for the justice in allocation of economic resources. We can work toward new ways of organizing ourselves without hierarchy and without divisions between differences.

Before talking about restorative justice, it’s important to talk about what the “criminal justice” system is. It is not monolithic, but rather a network of various agencies that are worried about their budgets, and which are focused on punishment, not justice. These agencies include lawyers and judges, and police, parole, and probation officers. Restorative justice is a term that is used to describe alternative ways to deal with conflict and other issues arising from injury and victimization. It engenders remediation as well as accountability. Practices and programs of restorative justice respond to crime by identifying and taking steps to repair harm. They bring together all persons involved, including offenders and victims, and they transform the established relationship between communities and governments in responding to crime. Restorative justice involves indigenous practices, and models of it already exist around the world, particularly in Northern Ireland, Eastern Europe, western and southern Africa, and New Zealand. (See more on the Web at http://www.restorativejustice.org.—Ed.)

There are several principles of restorative justice, including expecting offenders to take steps to repair the harm they have caused, seeking to restore victims and offenders to a place where they are contributing members of society, and providing opportunities for all parties involved to participate in its resolution.

Some restorative justice models and programs are:

• Victim and offender mediation (VOM)—facilitated mediation between victim and offender, in order to determine the just result; it is often used as an alternative to harsher punishment.

• Conferencing—similar to VOM but expanding the conversation by including families, support groups, social services, police, and other groups that have a stake in the resolution. This helps instill a sense of accountability and support for the victim and offender that is based on specific relationships. It was mainly started to work with juveniles. (See “From revolving door to open road” in this issue; http://www.communityconferencing.org on line.—Ed.)
• Circles—indigenous populations in the United States and Canada provide models for these; they involve not only the victim and offender coming together but also allow the community to be involved in the healing and restoration of justice.

• Victim assistance and ex-offender assistance programs—these provide support to both victims and offenders for healing and restoration of harm; they may also include community service or restitution programs or both.

From a prison abolitionist point of view, restorative justice does not go far enough. Prison abolitionists want to arrive at transformative justice—where they transform the very system that continues to use punishment as a means of control and criminalizes those who are actually victims of unjust social and economic systems. Justice, as security and public safety, is defined for us as locking more and more people up, instead of what it should mean—providing affordable housing, jobs, healthcare, education, youth programs, and drug addiction treatment. We need to look at transformative justice models and programs as alternatives, so that we can begin to reduce our reliance on prisons and punishment to solve problems.

Transformative justice is really about creating not only alternatives to policing, surveillance, and incarceration, but also advocating for reparations and restitution to communities that have been denied access to economic resources. It is truly about economic justice. Therefore, programs that are dedicated to providing resources to communities, through direct services, advocacy, and organizing are all ways to attain transformative justice.

Take for example the “War on Drugs.” The Sentencing Project in Washington DC recently released a report that examines the burden the “War on Drugs” has placed on the criminal justice system, A 25-Year Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society. The report studies present strategies in the US to combat drug abuse with punishment, implemented at the expense of investing in prevention and treatment. Here are some of the facts highlighted in the report:

• Drug arrests have more than tripled since 1980; there were 581,000 in 1980 and over 1.8 million in 2005 (pp. 2, 3)

• In 2005, approximately 4 of 5 of drug arrests (81.7%) were for possession and about 1 in 5 for sales (18.3%), while overall 42.6% of drug arrests were on marijuana charges (p. 3)

• Nearly 6 in 10 persons (58%) in state prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or large-scale marketing of drugs (p. 2, 12–13).

By implementing treatment, drug decriminalization policies, and other diversion programs, the prison population could easily be halved in the near term. The report also makes relevant recommendations (pp. 27–29), such as

• shifting funding priorities, since currently two thirds of federal anti-drug funds are devoted to law enforcement

• approaching drug abuse as a community and health problem, not a criminal issue

• repealing mandatory sentencing laws

• increasing treatment options within the criminal justice system, especially for those on probation and parole or under other community supervision, since parole violations make up a large number of prison admissions

• increasing funding for defense intervention services, because public defenders lack resources to assess their clients’ requirements and make appropriate plans for them, and interaction with public defenders is often the first place defendants meet the criminal justice system.

It is also evident that the prison system is racist and classist, with, for example, people of color being arrested and incarcerated more often than whites for similar offenses in all jurisdictions of the United States (Sentencing Project 2007, pp. 19–24). Discussion of reparations needs to be instigated in order for justice to flourish. Reparations are meant to undo the damage done by racism and supply the economic resources and opportunities denied by it. Many of the recommendations outlined above provide opportunities to reallocate and restore these.

Those who advocate restorative justice must look at every issue in terms of its goals. Are we living up to the goals? Are we willing to make a sacrifice for the common good? If we want world peace, how are we living it? If we want environmental sustainability, how are we living that? If we want a safe neighborhood, do we know our neighbors? Are we willing to speak out for justice, because it might mean giving up some privilege? It’s all about what we personally are able to contribute. Some can have a bigger impact than others, but all impact is important. It’s the tipping point that counts: we need to be allies and raise the voices of those incarcerated and those indirectly affected, until true social transformation and justice can take place. This means working to educate others about how the prison industrial complex affects us all.

Resources

“What is restorative justice?” on the Web at http://www.restorativejustice.org.

El-Amine, Zein, “Abu Ghraibs in our Backyard,” Left Turn Magazine 14 (Oct. 2004)

Mauer, Marc and Ryan S. King, A 25-Year Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society, The Sentencing Project (http://www.sentencingproject.org), Washington, DC, Sept. 2007.

“What is abolition?” Critical Resistance, Brooklyn, NY (no date), http://criticalresist.live.radicaldesigns.org/downloads/What_is_Abolitio....