It Takes a Community

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.