3 Important Steps to Accountability in Restorative Justice

One of the core tenets of restorative justice is the idea of accountability. Accountability is important for those who have committed crimes, but it is also an important element in maintaining healthy relationships, in and out of prison.
The idea of accountability sounds good, especially to those who have been harmed by another, but it would be helpful to have a working definition of what accountability looks like. I have identified the following three elements to accountability that you may find helpful in healing your own relationships:

1. We must own our behavior

Participants in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings introduce themselves by ending with "and I'm an alcoholic." Holding oneself accountable begins by acknowledging responsibility for our behavior. This does not necessarily mean labeling ourselves as "criminal" or "bad", or even alcoholic. But it does mean identifying the harms we have caused and owning responsibility for those harms. It means admitting things like, "I caused the victim to be terrified", "I was responsible (directly or indirectly) for that person's death", or even "my attitude caused a rift in our relationship." 

This owning must not be accompanied by excuses though. Excuses minimize responsibility and prevent the healing process from taking place. Excuses like "I was drunk", "I was raised in an abusive home", "nobody would give me a job", or "I wasn't the only one at fault" all try to shift responsibility from the offender to someone or something else. 

Owning our behavior must come with no qualifiers; we accept our responsibility for the harm we caused with no "ifs" or "buts" attached.

2. We must own the consequences of our behavior

Nobody wants to experience negative consequences to their behavior. We may no say that we want to get off scot free, but we often believe our offenses should either be completely forgiven or overlooked. But life rarely works that way. Even natural laws define consequences. For example, the law of gravity says that what goes up must come down. It is illogical to believe that bad behavior will not be followed by negative consequences. 

We experience bad consequences, but our victims also experience bad consequences from our behavior and we must own our cause in these consequences. Sometimes consequences cannot be changed and we must acknowledge that: "I will never get back the time lost with my children", "I can never bring back the person I killed", or "I can never take back those hurtful words." Some consequences can be lessened by our attempts at healing the harms we have done, but whether or not this is the case, we are still responsible for the consequences that first existed and for what remains.

3. We must own our obligations

When we harm someone we create obligations to that person and possibly to others as a result of our behavior. The most basic obligation we create is to apologize for the harms we have caused. Our obligations may also include restitution of what was taken, damaged, or destroyed; a commitment to identify and change our faulty thinking patterns; working to prevent similar future harms by ourselves or others; and restoring security, power, and dignity to the person we harmed.
Other obligations also exist that may include seeking professional help for our compulsions, or paying for counseling for our victims.

Being accountable for one's behavior is an important part of healing for both the victim and offender. Offenders who truly desire to change and to participate in the healing for those they have harmed must start by being accountable for their actions. When this happens restorative justice has begun.