{"id":90,"date":"2009-12-29T11:06:07","date_gmt":"2009-12-29T18:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2010-01-02T22:57:37","modified_gmt":"2010-01-03T05:57:37","slug":"restorative-justice-offers-an-opportunity-not-a-guarantee-for-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Restorative justice offers an opportunity, not a guarantee, for healing"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Not everyone’s wounds will heal” after being victimized by crime, an experienced judge says.\u00a0 This is true.\u00a0 Some people will never heal.\u00a0 Restorative justice is not a panacea that will heal every single person’s wounds suffered from being a crime victim.\u00a0 Restorative justice offers only the opportunity for healing, not a guarantee, but we know from an abundance of research that restorative justice helps many people.<\/p>\n

Currently our justice system primarily only offers crime victims one method for healing, which is retribution.\u00a0 Most people who commit crimes are punished.\u00a0 Their punishment is supposed to provide “justice” for the victims and the community.\u00a0 It is an “eye for an eye” type of solution.\u00a0 Punishing the offender, however, does not provide healing for many victims and often does not rehabilitate offenders who repeat crimes.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the retribution solution ignores over 70% of all victims where no one is ever arrested or identified as the perpetrator of the crime committed against them.\u00a0 These crime victims do not even get retribution, and while some states do provide monetary compensation for some victims, healing is still lacking.<\/p>\n

A restorative response can be provided for victims where no one is identified as the person who committed the crime.\u00a0 In Hawai’i we conducted a unique pilot project with victims of crime with unknown offenders and found restorative interventions were healing for them (See: Restorative Justice Without
\nOffender Participation:A Pilot Program for Victims, 2004, http:\/\/www.iirp.org\/library\/lwalker04.html<\/a>).\u00a0 By engaging in the pilot the participants told encouraging stories of courage and creativity.\u00a0 Their being honored and respected by having the opportunity to share their experiences was part of healing, not only for themselves, but for others who heard their stories.<\/p>\n

We need to provide opportunities for healing, which restorative justice offers.\u00a0 It does not guarantee every person who participates in a restorative practice will heal.\u00a0 It only offers the potential and opportunity for healing,<\/p>\n

Recently, Ben Furman, a Finnish psychiatrist and I developed www.apologyletter.org<\/a>, which provides a confidential program for people to prepare an apology based on restorative principals.\u00a0 We have recently revised the program, which now offers victims who do not get an apology, the opportunity to imagine an apology.<\/p>\n

I found first hand benefits of the program by imagining an apology to a serious crime I suffered.\u00a0 Despite years of analyzing the crime and how it affected me, I thought I had healed from it completely, but when I imagined an apology I experienced a level of relief and understanding about what happened and how it affected me, which I had not known before.\u00a0 The unexpected benefits were a huge surprise to me.<\/p>\n

The imagined apology is a powerful tool and shows again that we can apply restorative principles without engaging the person who hurt us.\u00a0 We can bring healing to ourselves.\u00a0 The opportunity exists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Not everyone’s wounds will heal” after being victimized by crime, an experienced judge says.\u00a0 This is true.\u00a0 Some people will never heal.\u00a0 Restorative justice is not a panacea that will heal every single person’s wounds suffered from being a crime victim.\u00a0 Restorative justice offers only the opportunity for healing, not a guarantee, but we know from an abundance of research that restorative justice helps many people. Currently our justice system primarily only offers crime victims… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lorennwalker.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}