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Restorative Justice

Jacey M. Shoemaker

College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Grand Canyon University

JUS-212: Criminal Behavior and Victimology

Derrick Jones

October 10, 2021

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Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice is the “use of humanistic, non-punitive strategies to right wrongs and

restore social harmony (Siegel, 2018). In simpler terms, it is the process of providing criminals

with experiences that help them to connect with the societal and personal effects of their crime in

order to bring about change within the offender. Michelle Alexander said, “we must face violent

crime honestly and courageously if we are ever to end mass incarceration and provide survivors

what they truly need to heal” (Alexander 2019). Restorative Justice is a radical approach to

offender rehabilitation based on the idea that criminals only commit crime because they have a

disconnect from the consequences of the crime on other people and on themselves. There are

programs in place to help direct the process of rehabilitation and reparation.

Restorative Justice Programs

There are several versions of Restorative Justice Programs. Each program has a similar

set of goals, training and processes, and purposes. However, each program is meant to be

applied to a specific stage of the Justice System and has its own unique setbacks and

complications. These programs are individual but are all part of a movement meant to bring

empathy, understanding, and peace to offenders and victims alike.

Categories and Stages of Justice

One of the largest points of identification for classifying a Restorative Justice Program is

to determine at what point the program is meant to be implemented. Programs can be

implemented as a final warning to young offenders, mediation with school officials, handling

complaints to police, diversion from prosecution, pre-sentencing, preventative add-on to the

sentencing process, supplement to a community sentence, and as preparation for release from

long-term imprisonment (Siegel, 2018). Another classification factor for programs would be the
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methods used in treatment. Program content ranges from victim-perpetrator mediation to

mindfulness. Each program addresses a specific type of offender and addresses their individual

needs in the most appropriate way.

Issues and Complications

Restorative Justice Programs must be wary of the cultural and social differences that can

be found throughout our heterogenous society (Siegel, 2018). For this reason, a great deal of

cultural needs are met depending on the region in which the program is put in to use, still the

programs are not always accepted as they are seen as being a “soft approach” to criminal

behavior. The variation of treatment options is also a problem. There are always mentors or

monitors who help mediate or to keep track of a participants progress, but the rest of the program

is not regulated in any way and is therefore not entirely reliable as a treatment option. Some

programs are solely offender focused, and neglect the need to balance the needs of offenders

with those of their victims (Siegel, 2018). Another controversial issue is that benefits may only

work in the short term while ignoring long-term treatment needs (Siegel, 2018). In some cases

there are extenuating factors that contribute to the criminality of the subject that are not

addressed within the program.

Goals and Purposes

Each program will have its own goals outlined, but the majority will contain some

version of the same goals. The first and most important goal of the program is to rehabilitate the

offender so that he or she will not re-offend, further injuring individuals and society. Though the

rehabilitation of the offender is important, many programs also encompass goals for the victim of

the crime, aiming to help in the healing process. The restoration process begins by redefining

crime in terms of a conflict among the offender, the victim, and the affected constituencies
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(Siegel, 2018). Including and attending to the needs of everyone involved is an approach that

encompasses healing from the time the crime was committed through the sentencing and parole

of the offender. This works to hold the offender accountable not only for the crime, but for the

effects of the crime on the victim, on society, and on the offender themselves. Experts propose

that the enhanced accountability subsequently decreases the likelihood of recidivism by placing

the focus on the offender reintegrating as a productive member of society (McChargue, 2020)

Propensity scores drawn from the Texas Justice System discovered that offenders who had

participated in Bridges to Life, a restorative justice program, had lower recidivism rates at one

and three year years after release in both violent and non violent offenders (Han, 2021) However,

Greene determined that empirical evidence confirmed that the still emerging campaign is

evolving as historical benevolent penal reforms and shows that restorative justice is manifesting

a vast majority of the elements associated with a regressive social change movement (Greene,

2021). Meaning that the changes evidenced at one and three years may not be permanent, and

that the data may actually show that the system does more damage than good.

Insight Prison Project

Discovering the purpose, goals, methods, and reported results of these programs is

important, but true understanding of the motivations cannot be had without delving deeper in to

an individual program to examine the processes and motivations of all involved. Without any

kind of regulation, each program will have a different rate of success. This success will depend

largely on the people who have dedicated their time to mentor, mediate, train, and teach

offenders and their counterparts (Sharpe 1998). In order to work through this idea of individual

success, it is important to draw information from a highly reliable and successful program. The

Insight Prison Project has been providing rehabilitation services for more than thirty years.
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While their programs have progressed with the times, their dedication to building success in the

lives of offenders and victims alike has not wavered.

Goals

A successful restoration program involves turning the justice system into a healing

process rather than being a distributor of retribution and revenge (Siegel, 2018). The Insight

Prison Project works to do just that. A main facet of the program is the Victim Offender

Education Group who works to empower offenders and victims and encourage healing dialogue.

A study done in Malaysia involving 63 victims suggests that, in general, there was a willingness

to participate and that among the victims’ main motivations was the desire to express their voice

and to understand their victimization (Mohammad, 2021). Using the dialogue to give the victim

a measure of understanding and closure can be helpful to the healing process. Restorative justice

sees crime as a breakdown of society and human relationships and attempts to mend these

relationships through dialogue, community, support, involvement, and inclusion (sharp 1998).

Victim dialogues are only the beginning of the process. David Doerfler said it best, “until you

become accountable beyond yourself to your victim and your community, there can be no

healing” (Doerfler, 2019).

Victim and Offender

No relationship within the program is more important than that of the victim and

offender. During the program, the offender is asked to recognize that he or she caused injury to

personal and social relations along with a determination and acceptance of responsibility, ideally

accompanied by a statement of remorse (Siegel, 2018). The point of view and experiences of the

victim are invaluable to this process and are often the center of the rehabilitation experience in

the Insight Prison Project, if the victim is amenable to participation. Offenders often do not
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naturally develop insight into the harms caused by their criminal activity and experts historically

asserted that greater understanding and empathy development by offenders for their victims and

the harm they caused produce emotional and behavioral changes that directly translate to a lower

re-offense rate (McChargue, 2020).

Programs

While some programs focus on one session intervention that is based on restorative

justice principles, in order to reduce the demand on the staff who implemented the intervention,

and increase the numbers of offenders who receive the intervention at less cost (MCChargue,

2020), the Insight Prison Project runs a variety of programs running anywhere from eighteen to

fifty-two months. IPP pushes cognitive behavioral work beyond an isolated mental process and

invites participants to integrate cognitive learning with an awareness of how thoughts, impulses

and actions manifest physically and emotionally (Mizell, 2014). The beginner course in the

program is a victim-offender education group, an eighteen month program for incarcerated

people who wish to understand themselves better, how their life experiences and decisions led

them to prison, and how their crimes have impacted their victims. The main goals of this group

are offender education, accountability, empathy, understanding victim impact, relapse

prevention, and to provide a platform for safe and consensual victim-offender dialogue (Wilson,

1999).

The next step would be to take a fifty-two week curriculum called Next Step (Mizell,

2014). The Next Step program focuses on introspection, identifying and addressing resolved and

unresolved trauma, connecting feelings and emotions with real stories, understanding attachment

issues, and understanding the impact of crime on the victims (Umbreit, 2001). The culmination
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of the program is to initiate ways of giving back to the prison community and to advocate for

prisoner evolvement in similar programs.

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References

Alexander, Michelle. (2019). Reckoning With Violence. The New York Times.
Https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/opinion/violence-criminaljustice.html

Doerfler, D., (1998). The Premise of Concentric Journeys and who is it for? Concentric Journeys.
Https://www.concentricjourneys.com/index.

Greene, D. (2013). Repeat performance: is restorative justice another good reform gone bad?
Contemporary Justice Review, 16(3), 359-390.
Https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/10282580.2013.82912

Han, W., Valdovinos Olson, M., & Davis, R.C. (2021). Reducing recidivism through restorative Justice:
an evaluation of Bridges to Life in Dallas. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 60(7), 444-463.
Https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.10509674.2021.1966156

McChargue, D., Pavelka, S. A., & Kennedy, J. (2020). Restorative Justice Interventions. Corrections
Today. 82(6), 20-24.

Mizell, B., (2014). Insight Prison Project. Www.insightprisonproject.org/ipp-blog.

Mohammad, T., & Azman, A. (2021). “Do I want to face the offender?”: Malaysian victims’ motivation
for participating in resorative justice. Contemporary Justice Review, 24(3), 290-311.
HTTPS://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10/1080/10282580.2021.1881892

Sharpe, S., (1998). Restorative Justice: A vision for healing and change.

Siegel, L. J. (2018). Criminology: Theories, patterns, and typologies (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson
Wadsworth. ISBN-13: 9781337091848 (Available as e-book
only) https://www.gcumedia.com/digital-resources/cengage/2018/criminology_theories-patterns-
and-typologies_13e.php

Umbreit, M., (2001). The Handbook of Victim Offender Mediation, An Essential Guide to Research and
Practice.

Wilson, J., (1999). Crying for Justice. Hope Magazine.

Https://www.justalternatives.org/cryingforjustice.pdf