Guest Essay
Rev. Gary Judson of the First United Methodist Church, Canandaigua, NY

Healing Principles Studied

Recently I had the privilege of attending a Restorative Justice Workshop led by the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections sponsored by our County's Alternatives to Incarceration Board.  I attended as a member of the county's Task Force on Restorative Justice.  I would like to share with you some of my learnings.

The criminal justice system in our county focuses almost exclusively on the offenders as lawbreaker and on punishment.  Crime is seen as an offense against the state and it is the state's responsibility to see that the offender is punished and often sent to prison.  This system is not working as is evident from the growing number of prisons across our county and the high rates of recidivism.  Our prison industry is one of the largest industries in our country and we have the highest percent of prisoner per population of any country in the world.

The new/old concept of restorative justice has been re-emerging over the past few years.  This concept, based on the biblical principles of forgiveness and restoration, focuses on the harm caused by crime and brings together the parties involved; the offender, the victim and the community in ways that seek to bring healing and restoration to all involved.

Crime has a tremendous impact upon victims, but in our present system they are ignored and given little if any attention.  Even the offenders are sidelined as the judicial process begins to work.  They become little more than a pawn in the negotiations between the prosecutors, defense lawyers and the judges.  Crime always has a tremendous impact on a community, but seldom is the community ever included in the justice process in a healing and restorative way, but more often in fault finding and punitive ways.

In one practice of restorative justice the offender, victim and members of the community are brought together in a face-to-face meeting with a skilled mediator.  The offender can hear first hand the effects of their crime on a real person. Criminal acts are seldom against the state they are acts of violence against another human being or the community and they have a terrible impact on our lives. Offenders hearing the real impact of their crimes are often repentant and resolved to change.  Often in those meetings a form of restitution is agreed upon wherein the offender is also restored back into the community. Under our present system offenders coming back into the community, having done their time and having been punished, are often branded with he capital letter C for criminal - a person with a past record.  Then restoration back into the community is difficult at best and often never happens.  Mostly they drift on the edges of the community until they commit another crime and the cycle starts over.

There is a better way and my hope is that instead of continuing to build more and bigger prisons we will start to integrate the principles and practices of restorative justice into our criminal system, principles that are really healing and restorative.