What IS Restorative Justice?
Restorative justice emphasizes repairing the harm caused by criminal behavior, instead of punishing perpetrators.
It is best accomplished through cooperative processes that include all stakeholders, which can lead to transformation of people, relationships and communities.
This is in stark contrast to a Retributive justice system, which is the ONLY system of justice you are likely aware of.
Retributive justice, as the name suggests, presumes that the best solution to criminal behavior is retribution.
And what is retribution?
Revenge.
That’s right, the accepted “justice system” of the “civilized societies” of the world is to take revenge on those who have violated the laws of the land.
As an advocate for Nonviolent Communication and the Non-Aggression Principle, it is my view that a retributive justice system is not only morally wrong, but it is also counterproductive to what it intends to accomplish.
And as I have said before and will say many times in the future, anything you attempt to achieve by force, you will actually achieve the opposite.
So without going into a deep analysis of the problems inherent in the justice systems of the world, let’s briefly compare retribution and restoration, as ways of resolving conflict.
And I will briefly point out that for simplicity I will refer to “crime” to refer to violations of laws, even though I have stated before that laws are all either redundant or immoral, and I don’t support the idea of laws as a foundation for moral behavior.
So the primary argument in favor of a punishment based response to criminal action is that it acts as a DETERRENT to those actions. You are less likely to steal from someone if you know that you will have a hand cut off if you get caught.
And while on this surface this may seem intuitive, in reality, everyone is WELL aware that retributive justice systems DO NOT actually prevent people from committing crimes.
Many would then argue that they REDUCE the occurrence of those crimes, but I’m not aware of any actual data that supports that argument.
What we DO know about retributive justice systems, is that they ENCOURAGE people to avoid getting CAUGHT violating laws, and do absolutely NOTHING to try and understand WHY a crime was committed in the first place.
Let’s think about a child, sneaking into the kitchen to steal a cookie from the cookie jar.
Why is the child SNEAKING? Because they know that they aren’t SUPPOSED to take a cookie, but they WANT one anyway. So they are attempting to avoid being caught.
Why? Is it because this child is evil, and has no sense of right or wrong?
No. It’s much more likely that the child has never been adequately CONVINCED of the reasons why they shouldn’t steal cookies.
“Don’t take a cookie unless I say you can” isn’t going to instill a moral virtue into the child to NOT desire a cookie.
The bottom line is that people will ALWAYS do what they think is in their own best interest. Even if they believe that what they are doing is benevolent for someone else, or even self-destructive, they are STILL acting in what they PERCEIVE is their own best interest.
For this reason alone, the most critical component of ANY attempt to resolve conflict must involve trying to understand WHY something happened in the first place.
After you understand the why, THEN you can attempt to resolve the problem in a way that meets the needs of EVERYONE involved in the situation, instead of simply labeling one party as “wrong” and assuming that if you punish them harshly enough, they won’t make the same choice in the future, despite you having NO IDEA why they made that choice the first time.
Or maybe you think you’ll feel better just for getting revenge.
Either way, I will focus future content on CONVINCING you that Retributive Justice is NOT justice, and consistent application of Nonviolent Communication and the Non-aggression Principle are far more effective and compassionate ways of resolving conflict.
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