Restorative Justice - reflections on national and international developments

Kay Pranis, Restorative Justice Planner
Minnesota Department of Corrections
May, 1999

In the past five years interest in the restorative justice framework has increased dramatically across the U.S. in individual states and counties and in federal government agencies.  At the same time there have been rapid developments in Canada, Europe, Australia, Africa and Asia.   

In South Africa Bishop Desmond Tutu characterizes the Truth and Reconciliation process as restorative justice. Several provinces in Canada have incorporated restorative justice into provincial justice policy. Peacemaking circles have spread from the Yukon Territory across Canada and into the United States.   In Northern Ireland competing factions claim restorative justice as their own.  In New Zealand all juvenile offenses except murder and manslaughter involve those closest to the incident in deciding an appropriate response through the family group conferencing process.  Judges routinely accept the outcomes of the community based process.  In Australia multiple adaptations of the family group conferencing process are being used with juveniles.  In Russia a grassroots mediation center is doing victim offender meetings.

Around the globe restorative language and processes are energizing renewed hope for more constructive responses to harm inflicted by humans on one another.  The values of restorative justice are being applied to political as well as street crimes.  Multiple racial and ethnic groups and religious traditions find the values of restorative justice in their own heritage.  The themes of restorative justice seem nearly universal in their appeal to a vision of peace based on reconciliation rather than peace based on fear.

A deep yearning for community and connection and a desire to be free from fear of the "other" are propelling this vision.  An intuitive sense that looking someone you hurt in the eye is one of the most effective growing pains in life has helped give form to the abstract notions of restorative justice.

In the United States progress has been made at both the grassroots and institutional level.  Barely on the screen five years ago, restorative justice is now a major consideration in criminal justice planning and future forecasting.  A group of leading corrections policymakers from around the country, exploring possible futures for corrections, identified restorative justice as a major trend influencing the future of corrections.

In the past 18 months the National Institute of Corrections has written, piloted and published a week long curriculum on restorative justice offered at the NIC Academy in Longmont, Colorado.  During that time the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the U.S. Department of Justice revised and piloted a week long curriculum on restorative justice designed for juvenile justice systems.  The two agencies have collaborated in the development of a training for trainers for both curricula.  Additionally, OJJDP has published and disseminated the Implementation Guide for Balanced and Restorative Justice for Juveniles to encourage use of restorative approaches.

Major media have "discovered" restorative justice with programs such as 20/20 and 48 Hours devoting major segments to stories of face to face meetings between victims and offenders.  Media interest in peacemaking circles has led to stories in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle and L.A. Times, even though no circle programs are in those cities.

But the most exciting news is at the local level - neighborhoods taking responsibility, individual judges sharing power, system/community partnerships forming to design their own way of helping victims and holding offenders accountable, educators taking the ideas of restorative justice into schools, professionals taking the values of restorative justice into their personal lives, managers applying the values of restorative justice in the work place, churches reexamining their responsibility to teach about the redemptive value of making amends and forgiving in public as well as private life.

Harm by humans to one another happens wherever two or more humans gather.  Consequently, restorative justice values are potentially applicable in all human endeavors.  Every human being has some opportunity to apply these ideas in their own life or work.

Because the ideas are so universally applicable, individuals or small groups of people have created pockets of restorative work in the most surprising places. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has the most well developed program in the nation for face to face dialog between victims and offenders in cases of severe violence.  Despite two full time staff, plus volunteers, devoted to this work there is a waiting list of over 350 victims wishing to take advantage of this service.  The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles oversees the most extensive attempt to implement restorative justice in a parole system.  The local parole office in a small town in South Georgia organized local resources to establish a child victim center to serve children.  Churches in a small town in Florida organized to reach out to the families of two college student visitors who were murdered by high school students in the Florida town.  Representatives from the Florida community traveled to Maryland to plant trees in memory of the murdered young men.  A woman whose adult daughter was raped and murdered teaches death and dying to inmates in a Texas prison which houses a death row and then goes home to raise her orphaned teenage granddaughter.

All of these heroes and sheroes are working to heal wounds caused by crime both to victims and offenders and their communities.  There is no limit to the creative possibilities once we are clear about healing as a goal and we begin to share our stories of healing with one another.  The stories of healing, the stories of reaching past our pain to touch one another as human beings, whether in South Africa or Texas or Northern Ireland, are the substance of a new vision of our capacity as human beings to get beyond retaliation and violence as responses to our pain, our capacity to see ourselves in the "other" and connect in the weave of our inseparable lives.  In the new global village there is no escaping the truth that harm to one is harm to all.  When we hurt another, we wound ourselves.  When we give to another, we enrich ourselves.  When we love another, we deepen ourselves.  Restorative justice is giving many people a way to take that profound truth into public life, thereby creating a resonance between public behavior and personal values.  In that lies the passion and power of the restorative justice movement.