Controversies Around Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is a movement with traction. People are excited by it. They are volunteering in growing numbers to make it happen. Some people are even getting paid to do it, especially in schools, and usually through nonprofits like Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, Community Works, and the Insight Prison Project (all discussed in this issue). Marilyn Armour’s article (page 25) sums up the progress so far.

Its practitioners say the movement’s innovative practices have immediate benefits and radical long-term potential.

There is hope, first, that it will keep young people and especially young people of color out of the criminal justice system, out of the school-to-prison pipeline. Once that is well under way, many believe that other visions will appear possible, all the way to the end of prisons as we know them and a reconception of the entire legal system (see Peter Gabel’s piece on page 18). Many hope this movement can also provide new ways of responding both to conflicts in general (Kay Pranis, page 33) and to the inherited oppressive structures of race and class (see Fania Davis’s piece on page 30, Denise Breton’s on page 45).

Restorative justice may be poised for a breakthrough into public awareness. It would be a boon for budget-cutting politicians and taxpayers if only the public could buy into it. For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area it costs around $50,000 to run a juvenile offender through the justice system, not counting the cost of incarceration if there is to be any, versus about $4,500 for a restorative process that typically leaves the victim much more satisfied, the young person reintegrated into the community without even being charged with a crime and much less likely to reoffend, and many community members relieved and grateful. Multiply the criminal justice cost many times for adults locked away for years.

But the rub is, punishment is nowhere seen in this process—unless, when you have harmed someone, you consider listening to them express their pain to be punishment, rather than a chance to develop empathy for them, see yourself in a different light, and learn and change in whatever way you now perceive is needed. Some consider that process tougher even than receiving punishment. Others think it’s being “soft on crime.”

Can a justice movement not based on punishment grow fast enough to win at the ballot box, even in an über-liberal city? In September the New York Times noted that “Restorative justice has long had proponents in some corners of the criminal justice system, but it is now gaining prominence in an unlikely forum: the San Francisco district attorney’s race.” We go to press too soon to know the result.

The restorative justice play Man.Alive. Stories from the Edge of Incarceration to the Flight of Imagination, featuring three formerly incarcerated individuals including Ivan Corado (right) and Reggie Daniels (center), as well as community artist Freddy Gutierrez (left), was performed widely in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2010. It was produced collaboratively by the nonprofit Community Works, the University of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department.

Or will restorative justice appeal more to small-government and traditional-values conservatives? Some of its elements do appeal to the Right, others to reformist liberals, others to radicals, including prison abolitionists. Of course, there are also elements that each of these players may dislike or hate. And no one will resist it more than the prison-industrial complex and the politicians in its pockets.

How it is presented by the media will be critical, but perhaps not decisive: it is how well it works in practice, in those places innovative enough to fund it, that will likely be decisive.

How We Talk about Controversies

Most articles in this issue come from progressive and radical activists, scholars, lawyers, and teachers who are writing wholly from within the restorative justice movement. We are centering their voices because it is they who have...