I have recently worked with several other Calvin Prison Initiative students on developing content to be shared (via video recording) at the restorative justice conference taking place at Hope College in Grand Rapids, Michigan on March 4th. During this process, I have spent a lot of time reading about and considering the community's role and obligations in restorative justice.
Each party who participates in restorative justice practices has responsibilities to the other parties involved. It is easy to see the responsibilities an offender has to his victim, and even to the community. It is also easy, from an offender's perspective, to see the community's responsibility to an offender. What is not so easy, but is still just as important, is to see the community's obligations to the victims of crime.
When a person is victimized by crime in a community, the community's obligations to that victim include:
1. Restoring the victim to wholeness, as much as is possible. This might include helping with financial losses, providing counseling and emotional, spiritual, and psychological support, and advocating with employers to hold a job while the victim recovers.
2. Advocating for the victim in the criminal justice process. Many times, victims of crime are made to feel secondary to the justice system when the system co-opts the harm and puts its own agenda over the wishes and needs of the victim.
3. Addressing the systemic injustices and inequalities that may have led to the crime that harmed the victim. When a community, including the political forces of the community, react to crime by only addressing its after-affects (i.e., harsher penalties for offenders), a great injustice is committed. Community members deserve the respect of preventative measures as well. This means the community tackling some tough issues that often lead to high crime rates: poverty, poor education, job shortages, racial and gender inequality, among other social injustices.
For restorative justice to work, each participant must embrace their obligations in the process and work collectively towards healing--healing victims, offenders, and the communities where crimes occur. It is not easy work, and challenges exist at every turn, but restoration is a worthy goal when we consider the human impact of crime.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
The One Essential Ingredient to Healing Harms
I recently finished a college course where we were assigned to read Nelson Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom." This reading assignment was part of a larger discussion of memory, in this case cultural memory.
I was fascinated in reading about Mandela's life, but not because he was a saint. Mandela had his flaws, like we all do, but he was committed to healing his nation despite the terrible injustices that had been afflicted on him and his people.
Mandela recognized that for the nation of South Africa to heal from its apartheid legacy, that past must not be ignored nor embellished. He knew that truthfully dealing with the past is essential to healing and also to avoiding repeating the mistakes of the past. Mandela recognized that the oppressed can easily become the oppressor if they do not deal in truth.
Too often, victims of crime may believe they are ensuring justice by stretching the truth, embellishing their story, or caving to the pressure to lie by an over-zealous prosecutor.
Likewise, offenders may believe that they are protecting the fairness of their prosecution if they deny their involvement in the crime, minimize their involvement or responsibility, or cast doubt on their victim's character.
Finally, zealous prosecutors, law enforcement, and courts too often push for quick closure of a case at the expense of uncovering the truth.
None of these scenarios lends itself to healing for the victim of a crime, for the healing of an offender's brokenness, or for the avoidance of crimes being repeated. Perhaps this is one reason the re-offense rates are well over 50% nationwide.
Only when courageous prosecutors, judges, victims, and offenders follow the example of Nelson Mandela and begin to deal only with the truth can we begin to see real healing take place. Only when we choose to deal only with the truth can we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
I was fascinated in reading about Mandela's life, but not because he was a saint. Mandela had his flaws, like we all do, but he was committed to healing his nation despite the terrible injustices that had been afflicted on him and his people.
Mandela recognized that for the nation of South Africa to heal from its apartheid legacy, that past must not be ignored nor embellished. He knew that truthfully dealing with the past is essential to healing and also to avoiding repeating the mistakes of the past. Mandela recognized that the oppressed can easily become the oppressor if they do not deal in truth.
Too often, victims of crime may believe they are ensuring justice by stretching the truth, embellishing their story, or caving to the pressure to lie by an over-zealous prosecutor.
Likewise, offenders may believe that they are protecting the fairness of their prosecution if they deny their involvement in the crime, minimize their involvement or responsibility, or cast doubt on their victim's character.
Finally, zealous prosecutors, law enforcement, and courts too often push for quick closure of a case at the expense of uncovering the truth.
None of these scenarios lends itself to healing for the victim of a crime, for the healing of an offender's brokenness, or for the avoidance of crimes being repeated. Perhaps this is one reason the re-offense rates are well over 50% nationwide.
Only when courageous prosecutors, judges, victims, and offenders follow the example of Nelson Mandela and begin to deal only with the truth can we begin to see real healing take place. Only when we choose to deal only with the truth can we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Longing as an Ingredient of Hope
It seems that as humans we are always longing. We might be longing for the good times of days gone by, for release from our present circumstances, or for a future hope yet unfulfilled.
The problem with these longings is that we often believe that the fulfillment of them will make us happy. But memories are usually better than the actual events we remember; circumstances are just a framework for our view of the world, and simply changing circumstances won't change our view; and our hopes for the future are always limited by our current knowledge of people and the world we live in, which both change.
Author C.S. Lewis notes that this longing of ours is our seeking for union with something from which we are separated. We often think that if only we could have this union it would resolve our longing.
And so we pursue fulfillment of our longings in things and people that never quite resolve the anxiety our longing brings.
Saint Augustine, who for years sought fulfillment of his longings in human love and pleasure, finally identified our ultimate longing as that for the supreme good. His well-known prayer from his "Confessions" addresses this ultimate longing:
"O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
As Augustine discovered, God has put this longing in us so that we would find solace in Him. Yet, as J.R.R. Tolkien noted, we too often look for solace IN God's blessings, not in God as found THROUGH his blessings as He intended.
Though Christmas has now past us, let's remember that the giving and receiving of gifts, the memories found through joyful times with family and friends, and the love and comfort we experience are simply vehicles through which we experience the character of God in whom we find our true solace and fulfillment of our greatest longings.
(This concept was adapted and paraphrased from Cornelius Plantina Jr.'s "Engaging God's World." The post title is a subheading in Plantinga's first chapter.)
The problem with these longings is that we often believe that the fulfillment of them will make us happy. But memories are usually better than the actual events we remember; circumstances are just a framework for our view of the world, and simply changing circumstances won't change our view; and our hopes for the future are always limited by our current knowledge of people and the world we live in, which both change.
Author C.S. Lewis notes that this longing of ours is our seeking for union with something from which we are separated. We often think that if only we could have this union it would resolve our longing.
And so we pursue fulfillment of our longings in things and people that never quite resolve the anxiety our longing brings.
Saint Augustine, who for years sought fulfillment of his longings in human love and pleasure, finally identified our ultimate longing as that for the supreme good. His well-known prayer from his "Confessions" addresses this ultimate longing:
"O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
As Augustine discovered, God has put this longing in us so that we would find solace in Him. Yet, as J.R.R. Tolkien noted, we too often look for solace IN God's blessings, not in God as found THROUGH his blessings as He intended.
Though Christmas has now past us, let's remember that the giving and receiving of gifts, the memories found through joyful times with family and friends, and the love and comfort we experience are simply vehicles through which we experience the character of God in whom we find our true solace and fulfillment of our greatest longings.
(This concept was adapted and paraphrased from Cornelius Plantina Jr.'s "Engaging God's World." The post title is a subheading in Plantinga's first chapter.)
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