RESTORATIVE JOURNEY

Restorative Journey

Restorative Journey

Restorative justice addresses a unique set of questions: what harms occurred, who was harmed, and how can matters be made right. In doing so, it renounces vengeance and punishment as a means of ensuring social conformity and control. It distinguishes between the offense and the offender, respects each stakeholder in the conflict, and considers no one a “throw-away person.” Adherents insist on the priority of public safety. For that reason, they accept prisons and jail as a means of temporary restraint, even if, in the case of dangerous offenders, this involves long-term incarceration (Yazzie, 1994).

A growing canon of literature attests to the social, moral, and personal satisfaction that the restorative approach engenders in all participants. Empirical evidence suggests that restorative justice “works” and can meet its objectives. Emerging in the 1970s as isolated grass-roots criminal justice initiatives based on reconciliation and reintegration, rather than on retribution, it has become an international movement promoting both criminal and social justice. In 2002, the United Nations adopted the Declaration of Basic Principles on the Use of Restorative Justice Programmes in Criminal Matters (Rodzik 2006).

The term restorative justice, first recorded in 1977, refers to restoring a peace and harmony that a criminal act has broken; it means restoring the social balance that had been subverted by some violation of human relationships. The meaning of restoration has expanded to include reincorporating traumatized individuals into their communities, thus restoring their sense of well-being and personal integrity (Putnam, 1995).

Restorative justice has spiritual roots in major faith traditions. This is so despite the fact that tribal or literalist interpretations have obscured the original claims of restoration and reconciliation and tend to insist on punishment and revenge. At root, according to the redemptive view of faith traditions, human beings inhabit a moral universe that evokes an integrated moral response from the whole person. As part of that moral universe, one understands human beings as, variously, “children of God,” created in “God's image,” or endowed with the “Buddha nature.” All persons, in other words, are inherently valuable moral beings connected not only to one another but also to all of creation (Pranis, 2005). The aboriginal salutary expression “All my relations” captures the notion of the utter interdependence and interrelatedness of the individual in the created order.

These beliefs lend depth and historical continuity to restorative justice views on the centrality of relationships in justice theory. By extension, spiritual traditions regard truth and justice as relational concepts as well. They regard faith as a life “path” or “journey,” a comprehensive lifestyle that deepens as one matures. Central to the journey—and hence central to the practice of restorative justice—is ongoing transformation: of perspectives, structures, situations, and persons (Llewellyn, 2005).

Special initiatives throughout the world have drawn on diverse faith traditions. Among these, aboriginal spiritual and cultural traditions, such as Maori, Gitsxan, Cree, and Navajo, are particularly influential in determining the architectural dynamics of the processes. They embrace a broad range of creative approaches: circle sentencing, community holistic circle healing (the Hollow Water ...