A Community's Participation in Radical Hospitality

Restorative justice, as an expression of radical hospitality, involves three parties who have an invested interest in healing the wounds of injustice caused by crime: communities, victims, and offenders.

Through restorative justice practices, communities can focus on repairing the injury of social injustice and facilitating the healing of harms toward this end. I would argue that communities have a duty to victims of crime, offenders who commit crimes, and the citizens who are affected by the damage crime causes.

Communities have a duty to VICTIMS to:

•  Restore wholeness
•  Provide needed services to the victims
•  Restore the lost connections victims experience due to feelings of shame
•  Address social inequalities that contribute to crime
•  Participate in restorative communications and dialogue 

Communities have a duty to OFFENDERS to:

•  Ensure accountability through a restorative approach
•  Promote constructive dialogue
•  Make a path to allow the removal of crime's stigma
•  Make repentance and forgiveness possible

Communities have a duty to its CITIZENS to:

•  Ensure societal peace and harmony
•  Minimize the financial costs of crime
•  Address the problems of structural disadvantage and inequality that contribute to high crime rates

When a community focuses on its duty to all three of these stakeholders that are affected by crime, the community can promote peace and healing, empower its citizens who are victims of crime, and contribute to the transformation of its incarcerated citizens. These goals are the result of a radical approach to hospitality through restorative justice practices.

Communities are not an unidentifiable body; they are a collection of its members. This means that if you belong to a community, you ARE that community. Each member, then, has a duty to ensure that its community as a whole participates in repairing social injuries of injustice and facilitating the healing of harms towards this end. Today, how will you promote peace in your community, empower other citizens who have been victimized by crime, and help to transform its incarcerated citizens? 

In my next post I will talk about how victims can participate in a radical expression of hospitality through restorative justice practices.