Restorative Justice

In the case of World War II, it made sense to rehabilitate Germany and Japan. Their prosperity would help promote the overall prosperity of the world economy. Today, nobody would think twice of buying a BMW, or owning a Sony Play Station. If we can realize that kind of potential overseas, what does it say about contemporary America that we can’t see any potential amongst our own? Is it such a courageous act to throw away people’s lives for a mistake?

The real test of a justice system is whether it’s beneficial. Does it provide a working structure to solve a social problem? While we, imperfect beings that we are, will never be able to create a system that provides complete justice, we should always strive for that ideal. By being humble and understanding our limitations, we might come fairly close to providing the ideal atmosphere for a justice system to operate.

What we label our justice system, punitive or restorative, is not as important as the underlying attitude of those who are in authority and have the awesome responsibility of measuring out justice. At the same time, different systems have different benefits and we need to weigh the overall consequences of a system to determine if we need to make changes. However you want to categorize the current system, it doesn’t seem to be working.

Since a justice system should address the wrong that one party has committed to another, an attempt should be made to right the wrong. The problem is that in most felonies the wrong can never be completely righted. This is because the experience that the victim went through can never be taken back, and the change in the victim’s perceptions cannot be totally undone.

Attempting to undo what really can’t be undone is frustrating. It’s much easier to skip the idea of resolving a problem and using the punishment as a way to appear concerned about the victim. Justice has often been sold as a way to control or fix a situation. The quicker and easier the better. There is no quick fix to crime however, and it is insulting to crime victims to pretend otherwise.

There are two options in life, conflict and resolution. One would have to live a very sheltered life not to experience some insult, outrage, provocation or crime every now and then. Do we deal with that by going to war? When it’s a crime, do we want the government to go to war on our behalf? Some people do, and in some cases it’s understandable due to the nature of the crime. Most of the time, it’s not necessary to go that far. We can resolve a lot of problems without all the theatrics of our current system.

Justice acknowledges the importance of people and the value we place on their rights. Pursuing justice doesn’t justify being destructive or cruel. Destroying people to show how much we value laws is a strange form of justice. A little restraint on the part of our government would go a long way towards restoring a justice system that benefits all parties.

Read more on this topic at www.politicsandjustice.com, you can also read my book Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher for free at that site.