Submitted by Katherine Schaefer
What is justice? It’s an old, old question.
Carolyn Boyes-Watson, Director of Suffolk University’s Center for Restorative Justice, does an excellent interview here that answers from the restorative justice perspective. In addition, she explains very clearly how and where the restorative justice and traditional, criminal justice answers do and don’t overlap.
This article covers just about anything that someone new to the restorative justice community would want to know. After explaining some of the basic ideas and key thinkers, she touches on several key issues–and does so in a way that people with little background in restorative justice can understand. She reflects on:
- the difference between ‘harm’ and ‘crime’
- how we think about ‘victim’ and ‘offender’
- how restorative justice can work on its own
- how restorative justice can work in partnership with a traditional justice system that has very different assumptions and goals
- how restorative justice can work within a polarized political system
- how accountability, empathy, and interpersonal change will affect the likelihood of reoffending
- how restorative justice can meet victims’ needs better than the traditional system
It’s a long article, but well-worth the read–especially for people trying to explain restorative justice to skeptics, for those new to the field, or anyone wanting a comprehensive review of a field in a (comparatively) short space.
It also does a really excellent job of explaining why everyone–not just the courts, or victims, or police, but everyone–needs to think about how we think about justice.
As Albert Einstein said, insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ Lauren Abramson (RJ Builds Democracy) highlights how we need to think about our systems and the results they produce, as does Carolyn Boyes-Watson.
She will explore this theme more fully on April 10th. You can learn more here.