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Vol. 73, No. 5, May 2000 |
Legislative Watch
Restorative Justice in Crime
Prevention and Rehabilitation
Assembly Bill 533 is the recommendation of the Special
Legislative Council Committee on Faith-based Approaches to Crime
Prevention and Justice. One of the bill's innovative recommendations
would allow three counties to test a restorative justice approach
to rehabilitation.
by Scott R. Jensen
The scene is repeated every day in Wisconsin. A crime is committed.
A victim is harmed. Our criminal justice system responds with
law enforcement apprehending the criminal, our court system trying
and sentencing the criminal, and our prison system locking away
the criminal. Once that criminal has served a sentence, we return
the criminal to the street and hope for the best.
Unfortunately, today's best is not very good. For a distressingly
large percentage of the inmates in our Wisconsin corrections
system, their release papers are a round-trip ticket. Upon release,
they revert to their old ways, repeat the same old patterns of
criminal behavior, and end up right back in prison.
Looking for new ways to break this depressing cycle was the
goal of the Special Legislative Council Committee on Faith-based
Approaches to Crime Prevention and Justice. This committee, which
I chaired, was commissioned to look at innovative efforts in
Wisconsin and around the nation that might hold promise in reducing
the level of crime and the level of recidivism in our state.
The committee featured an eclectic mix of public and private
members, liberals and conservatives, prosecutors and defense
attorneys, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and agnostics. Over the
course of our deliberations, we heard from people of all faiths,
every political stripe, every walk of life, and from all across
Wisconsin and the United States.
In the end, the committee made a series of recommendations including:
- prohibiting discrimination against faith-based providers
of crime prevention programs;
- establishing an around-the-clock, faith-based drug treatment
program in the Milwaukee corrections facility now under construction;
- requiring performance evaluations for organizations that
are awarded state drug and alcohol treatment grants; and
- assisting faith-based providers of social services in working
with the bureaucracy and meeting the clear legal standards of
church-state separation.
Restorative Justice
While all of these proposals hold great promise, I believe
that one of the most intriguing possibilities from the committee's
work lies in another area. In addition to these other proposals,
the bill forwarded by the committee -
Assembly Bill 533
- would allow three counties to test a "restorative
justice" approach to crime prevention. This approach works
to develop sentences and create relationships that help criminals,
their victims, and the larger community start to mend the tears
in our social fabric caused by crime.
For hundreds of years, crime has been treated as merely an
issue between the state and the criminal. Crimes and their punishments
have been based on the offense committed against the state's
system of law, not the offense committed in interpersonal terms
against a crime victim. In punishment for these crimes against
the state, our criminal code traditionally has prescribed locking
criminals up, away from society in general and their victims
in particular.
Restorative justice turns this equation on its head. Restorative
justice creates an avenue to bring criminals and their victims
together rather than keep them apart. It asserts that to right
the wrong that crimes have done to victims, criminals must be
confronted with the actual human consequences of their actions
and acknowledge the harm caused by their wrongdoing. It gives
crime victims the opportunity to meet with the criminals who
harmed them - to discuss the pain and disruption crime has
caused their lives. It also allows sentencing options that require
criminals to make some form of restitution to the specific person
or persons their crime has victimized.
Ironically, by encouraging criminals and their victims to
get together rather than keeping them apart, restorative justice
proponents assert that both criminals and victims gain.
Confronting criminals with the consequences of their actions
and making them take responsibility for them is the first step
towards true rehabilitation. Allowing them the opportunity to
make some form of restitution gives them a way to begin healing
the rift they have caused between themselves, their victims,
and society at large. It also helps criminals to feel that they
can once again become full and productive members of society.
Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen (Rep.), representing
the 32nd Assembly District, plays a key role in the direction
of the state Assembly and the state Legislature. Jensen graduated
magna cum laude from Drake University and earned his Masters
in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University. |
Allowing victims to participate in this process helps them
come to grips with the violence done to them and move beyond
the fear and anger caused by the crime. Further, they begin to
see the person who committed the crime as a human being and not
as an impersonal "offender." This change in perspective
makes it easier for victims to accept criminals' reintegration
into society after release.
Finally, restorative justice recognizes the damage done to
our communities by the disrupting effect of crime and works to
repair that damage as well. Simply warehousing criminals in prisons
until they are once again released to our streets and neighborhoods
creates a fractured community of "us" and "them."
By creating avenues for dialogue, forgiveness, restitution, and
reintegration of criminals into law-abiding society, we restore
the communal "we" essential to a whole and healthy
society.
Restorative justice is not a panacea. To work, it requires
voluntary participation by both criminals and their victims.
In some cases, neither party is willing or able to make the emotional
investment necessary for restoration to begin. In many cases,
however, restorative justice can be a worthwhile tool for repairing
the breech in our civil society caused by crime. As recognized
by the Legislative Council Committee on Faith-Based Approaches
to Crime Prevention and Justice, it is an approach that should
at the very least be given a chance to work in Wisconsin.
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