Restorative Justice

It might be because of my vastly incomplete but somewhat in-depth knowledge of psychology, but the concept of restorative justice seems to be psychology in its most basic form.  Based on secondhand knowledge of the prison system, corrective facilities are in-fact more crippling than corrective.  As far as constructive punishment is concerned, restorative justice is our only option as a progressive nation.  Kathy Bankhead walked us through this widely misunderstood and unused practice and advocated for a nationwide, restorative justice program.  The argument comes down to a simple dichotomy:

 Punishment vs. Restoration

According to Kathy, in order to accomplish "justice that heals," three elements need to be present and involved, the offender, the victim and the community. Having all parties present provides a progression of necessary steps towards justice.  When the offender is not only held responsible by the victim and community but personally holds responsibility for his/ her actions, only then does justice present itself as the ultimate goal.  When the offender holds responsibility, only then can amends be made between the offender and the victim and community.

Although a great concept when presented via statistically-supported, case studies showing successful usage of restorative justice, I am not convinced that this type of justice system is realistic in modern American society.  This skepticism comes from the assumption that the victim is capable of making amends with the offender.  I thought a good point was raised when Kathy was asked whether she thought that restorative justice could be applied every type of crime.  The majority of her examples of cases involving restorative justice were involving youth offenders.  I would be interested in understanding more about how restorative justice has been used, and more specifically, has shown to be successful in cases involving adult offenders. Also addressed, however minimally and not convincingly, was the question as to whether rape is an applicable type offense that would be able to be dealt with using restorative justice.  I think it is important to understand how different levels of psychological damage and the severity of the crime effects the outcome of a restorative justice case.  I can imagine that a seemingly horrendous crime that would traditionally be considered unforgivable could in-fact be resolved using alternative punishment in which all three components are involved. I am not convinced, however, that the task of getting all three components to cooperate is realistic at this point.  I assume that is the main goal of the Community Justice Center and similar centers, most of which at this point remain few and far between.  I think that it would be hard to argue that a more restorative approach to sentencing is not needed in our society.