What
Can We Do in Our Faith Communities? Can We Embrace Restorative Justice
to Transform the Justice System?
Rick Sarre
Rick Sarre brought the closing address of the 2006
Peace Colloquy at 8:30 a.m. Sunday, October 29, 2006. Rick is professor
of law and criminal justice at the University of South
Australia–Adelaide and writes, researches, and teaches in the field of
restorative justice. He also currently serves as a Community of Christ
self-supporting pastor.
There
was a story told in an article published a decade ago in the journal
Dalhousie Review by eminent Australian criminologist John
Braithwaite (1996). It tells the story of a fictitious lad named Sam,
who is a composite of a number of young men Professor Braithwaite had
observed in family conferences. We find that young Sam had robbed an
elderly woman of her purse and had been offered a conference as an
alternative to juvenile court. He agreed to attend but remained
belligerent for most of the conference.
What
struck me in reading this story was the last two or three paragraphs
(and I am quoting selectively):
When the
conference reconvenes, Sam’s sister speaks to him with love and
strength. Looking straight into his eyes, the first gaze he could not
avoid in the conference, she says that she knows exactly what he had
been through with their parents. No details are spoken. But the victim
seems to understand what is spoken of by the knowing communication
between sister and brother. Tears rush down the old woman’s cheeks and
over a trembling mouth. It is his sister’s love that penetrates Sam’s
callous exterior. From then on he is emotionally engaged with the
conference. He says he is sorry about what the victim has lost. He would
like to pay it back, but has no money or job. He assures the victim he
is not stalking her. … She wants her money back but says it will help
her if they can talk about what to do to help Sam find a home and a job.
Sam’s sister says he can come and live in her house for a while. … When
the conference breaks up, the victim hugs Sam and tearfully wishes him
good luck. He apologises again. Uncle George quietly slips a hundred
dollars to Sam’s sister to defray the extra cost of having Sam in the
house, and says he will be there for both of them if they need him.
Sam has a
rocky life punctuated by several periods of unemployment. A year later
he has to go through another conference after he steals a bicycle. But
he finds work when he can, mostly stays out of trouble and lives to
mourn at the funerals of Uncle George and his sister. The victim gets
her money back and enjoys taking long walks alone. Both she and her
daughter say that they feel enriched as a result of the conference,
[and] have a little more grace in their lives.
This
story was published a decade ago, a few years after I first began
teaching restorative justice concepts in our School of Law. I was struck
by Professor Braithwaite’s use of the term ‘grace.’ I was struck also by
the healing that emerged as soon as Sam was able to apologize, and the
importance for healing of responding to offending by a generosity of
spirit. I add quickly that restorative justice is, of course, more than
conferencing and more than victim-offender mediation. We all know that
it involves practices and procedures that can be applied across the
justice spectrum in policing, pre-trial diversion, court methods,
sentencing, and corrections. Regardless of the manifestations, it
occurred to me then, and it still occurs to me now, that this was a
movement from which faith communities should not, indeed cannot, remain
aloof. Despite the fact that historically (and sadly, I should add)
those who profess a faith are regularly treated with some suspicion by
social scientists, here was a social policy endeavour, blessed by the
lawmakers of many lands, to which congregations could respond. To use an
analogy to which I am sure we can all relate, we are all singing from
the same hymn sheet.
Or to
use a metaphor I can draw from my experiences in the cheap seats at the
Royals Stadium [now Kaufmann Stadium] some thirty years ago, if the
restorative justice movement is at the plate, faith communities are in
the on-deck circle swinging two bats, ready and willing to face the next
pitch. At the risk of stretching the metaphor to the breaking point, is
Howard Zehr a reincarnated George Brett?
The
justice/faith alliance has not always been obvious. Indeed there was a
complete absence of theological input into the newly emerging European
‘positivist’ (scientific) criminology of the nineteenth century.
Theologians who did engage in justice policy dialogues were forgotten or
bowled over in the rush toward empirical certainties and rational
explanations for crime and criminal behaviour.
But
there has been something of a renaissance between those espousing a
religious faith and criminologists (including positivists) after it
became clear that the two were not mutually exclusive. Indeed, there is
no shortage of qualitative and quantitative research into faith-based
restorative justice initiatives today. And, in fact, we now realise
(with the value of hindsight) that the connection between faith
communities and concepts of restorative justice goes back a very long
way (Sarre, 1994, 181 ff).
Indeed, it has become rather fashionable to find these alliances because
restorative justice is popular. People will always align themselves with
success. I would hang upside down for a week if I could be associated
with Nelson Mandela. But if I had invented the Florida voting machine,
on the other hand, I’d have changed my name already.
So
various themes and movements have been quick to find associations with
restorative justice, among them the movers and shakers for decarceration,
those championing the reestablishment of ancient indigenous practices,
the victims’ rights movement, civil rights advocates, self-help and New
Age proponents (Richards, 2005,
382–384), along with those seeking to implement therapeutic
models of psychology and law into courts and corrections. Others have
found links with Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian doctrines, the Code of
Lipit-Ishtar in 1875 B.C. and the Code of Hammurabi in 1700 B.C.
(discussed in Richards, 2006), Navajo peacemaking courts (Sullivan and
Tifft, 2005, 58), and the Afghan practice of jirga (Zehr, 2002,
62, cited in Richards, 2006).
I am
not saying that these connections are wrong, indeed many are strong. I
am simply saying that they may be overstating their credentials if they
are claiming status as precipitating elements. Nor does this
premodern ‘evidence’ account for the tremendous diversity of modern
restorative justice initiatives (Dignan, 2005, 95).
Today
I want to focus on the strong claims from the American Christian faith
traditions that they have been primary movers and shakers in
establishing and developing a range of restorative practices. The
undeniable connection with the Mennonite faith has been underscored in
this colloquy. I remind you that in the late ’70s, the Mennonite
Conciliation Service (MCS) began in Canada and then the USA, inspired,
in part, by the work of Methodist fellow travelers. Victim-offender
mediation is still the most prevalent form of restorative justice
practiced in the USA, accounting for 51 percent of all programs
according to a survey conducted a few years ago (Schiff and Bazemore,
2002, 182).
The
association between theological dialogue and restorative justice
deserves more attention than it has received in the past (Sarre, 1998;
Hadley, 2001; Forrester, 1997). The fact remains that the terminology
and concepts in many restorative settings and Christian practices alike
are virtually indistinguishable. To my way of thinking, no Christian
gathering is complete without some reference to the possibilities of
human transformation, reconciliation, restoration, repentance, and
forgiveness. One of the most powerful images in the New Testament is the
conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus. (My picture Bible even has a
painting of the occasion—by a very quick painter, I assume) We would all
appreciate that the phrase “a road to Damascus experience” has become a
common metaphor for any conversion moment.
Putting history to one side (and for an excellent overview of the
problematic claims of some in regard to the history of restorative
justice see Richards, 2005), the fact remains that in contemporary
settings, restorative justice advocates and faith communities (be they
Christian or otherwise) typically share common values: they both speak
of tolerance, respect, humility, compassion, selflessness, and
acceptance of the worth of all, regardless of their actions. Both
wrestle with age-old dilemmas, however: How do you work with people who
have engaged in violent and other terrible behaviours while appealing to
that shred of humanity that lies within them (in some cases deeper than
others) yet demanding responsibility for, and acknowledgement of, their
wrongdoing? How do you demand such acknowledgement without acting in a
demeaning, patronizing, and sanctimonious fashion? How do you foster
healing for the harmed without creating a potentially harmful situation
for offenders who have inflicted the harm? (Sullivan and Tifft, 2005,
8). Even a sage as wise as Solomon would struggle with these questions.
Let me
pause to offer my first proposition, therefore:
That some Christian faiths can rightly take credit as significant
players in the establishment and development of restorative justice
practices, and that contemporary connections between restorative
practitioners and parishioners are strong and obvious.
In
working through these connections, Christians, however, have to face up
to two rather harsh realities:
-
The history of Christianity has not always been consistent with a
restorative justice paradigm (and that legacy is a tough one to throw
off).
-
The approaches of some more conservative contemporary Christians to
criminal justice issues (and, I should add, the ones that tend to
dominate the popular image of Christians in the eyes of the media and
wider community) are often frustrating to restorative justice
advocates.
Let me
tackle these one at a time.
1.
Religious intolerance has been the stimulant for some of the worst
excesses of punitive systems of control. One does not have to be a
historian of the last two millennia to be confronted with a wealth of
evidence of nonrestorative practices carried out in the name of, or with
the blessing of, Christianity: among them war, genocide, murder, racism,
sexism, slavery, human rights abuses, sectarian violence, a litany of
pogroms and crusades, the persecution of heretics and apostates, and
general discrimination.
As
Stephen L. Carter wrote in his watershed work The Culture of
Disbelief in 1993: “Indeed there is virtually no evil that one can
name that has not been done, at some time and at some place and to some
real person, in the name of religion” (83).
One of
the more horrifying occurred in 1209 in the town of Béziers in the south
of France. The Crusaders had been sent by the pope to eradicate the
religious heresy practiced by the Cathars of Languedoc. After the town
succumbed, the leader of the crusading forces was directed to enter the
town and kill the Cathar heretics. According to contemporary accounts,
there may have been five hundred Cathars hiding from the Crusaders. The
leader asked the papal legate how he was supposed to work out who were
the heretics and who were the good Catholics. The reply attributed to
the legate was: “Kill them all; God will know his own.” And that is what
they did. The number of dead that appears in the legate’s report to the
pope was nearly twenty thousand (a story recounted in Gleeson, 2006).
Let’s
travel forward nearly five hundred years to Salem, Massachusetts (1692).
As a result of a number of church-run trials, twenty people were put to
death, at least one being crushed under heavy stones. The actions of the
zealots testify to the strong belief at the time, if not now, that
condign punishment and divine intervention could be one and the same.
Conveniently for the local authorities, those who were called on to
define evil and to find evidence of supernatural pacts were usually the
same people called on to determine guilt, and (no surprises here) the
same people who prescribed the process to determine the punishments.
In my
own country, when the European settlers arrived in the late eighteenth
century, they brought with them guns, germs, and steel (to borrow a
phrase from Pulitzer Prize-wining author Jared Diamond, 1997) and gave
the local indigenous peoples scant regard. International law at the time
provided robust assistance, and I quote from the Law of Nations
by the famous international jurist Vattel in 1758:
[W]hen the
Nations of Europe, which are too confined at home, come upon lands which
the savages have no special need of, and are making no present and
continuous use of, they may lawfully take possession of them and
establish colonies in them ... [W]e are not departing from the
intersections of nature when we
restrict the savages within narrower bounds. —page 85
Mercifully, eradication activities ended a century later, thanks to a
policy of protection from the 1880s. But along with policies of
assimilation (from the 1930s) and integration (from the 1960s) came the
widespread, albeit well-meaning, practice of taking so-called
‘half-caste’ children from their families and placing them in ‘proper’
Christian homes, a practice that had the blessing of the churches. It
was a period of Australia’s history examined in the 2002 movie Rabbit
Proof Fence and strongly criticized by the Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission following its Stolen Generation Inquiry (HREOC,
1997). It only ended officially in 1970. It had the blessing of
Christian churches.
There
was and is no shortage of scripture to provide succour to those of this
ilk (and I am indebted to the work of Chris Stanley, 2006, for
assistance here):
-
In Deuteronomy 7:2, Moses tells the people what God commands when
his chosen people come up against their neighbours: “When the Lord your
God places these people in your power and you defeat them, you must put
them all to death. Do not make an alliance with them or show them any
mercy.”
-
The battle of Joshua slaughtering the Amorites makes gruesome
reading (Joshua 10:8–11) but he had an ally in his God. We read “…the
Lord made large hailstones fall down on them [Amorites] all the way to Azekah. More were killed by the hailstones than by the Israelites.”
-
Students of the Hebrew scriptures will know which story I am
about to relate if I mention 2 Kings 2:23–25, where Elisha has been made
fun of by some boys. The King James Version has it that they said to
Elisha, “Go up thou bald head” while the Good News Bible has it: “Get
out of here, baldy.” Whatever was said, Elisha responded by cursing them
in the name of the Lord, whereupon two she-bears came out of the woods
and tore forty-two boys to pieces. No family conference for them.
-
The prophet Isaiah warned his people that the justice of God is
swift against those in iniquity. Here we read from Isaiah 13:11–12: “The
Lord says I will bring disaster on the earth and punish all wicked
people for their sins … those who survive will be scarcer than gold.”
Verses 14–16: “The foreigners living in Babylon will run away to their
own countries … anyone who is caught will be stabbed to death. While
they look on helplessly, their babies will be battered to death, their
houses will be looted, and their wives will be raped.”
The New
Testament likewise has many retributive references, especially when it
comes to heretics or those who fail to heed the word of God.
Paul
said something similar in the second chapter of his letter to the
Romans. I will spare you the horror of the sixteenth chapter of
Revelation.
In
other words, God has been portrayed by prophets and apostles as a
vindictive and vengeful torturer. Given this evidence, it would take
something fairly remarkable to be able to align restorative values with
Christianity.
Which
brings me to the second point.
2.
Where does contemporary ‘new right’ conservative Christianity sit on
this issue? The more obvious pogroms are gone, but has anything really
changed?
Commentator Gerald McHugh says no, especially when it comes to
considering the plight of those who have been treated inhumanely at the
hands of the criminal justice process:
Even after
the explicitly religious penal models of the penitentiary movement have
faded into history, it was (and is) widely assumed that the punishment
of the criminal is in some way a holy duty … And where Christians have
been concerned with justice, it has all too frequently been the
selective vengeance we have all sanctioned as retribution, as opposed to
the all-encompassing righteousness which is known as justice in the
Bible. It is not at all unusual to hear a Christian minister decry the
rising tide of crime and immorality in print or in the pulpit, but it is
rare indeed to hear a Christian minister exhorting the faithful to
actually dare to love their enemies. (1978, 133)
In
other words, the views of some conservative contemporary Christians to
criminal justice issues are capable of frustrating restorative
initiatives and themes. However, their views based, one assumes, on the
more retributive scriptural offerings stand in stark contrast to the
views of those who have located scriptures that uphold more
“restorative” themes:
-
Reconciliation, for example, is the purpose of the Day of Atonement
celebrated, as described in Leviticus 23:26–27, as Yom Kippur,
although I add reluctantly that the penalty for failing to observe the
Day of Atonement is death.
-
Restoration of property is the purpose of the “jubilee” principle,
described in Leviticus 25:8, where all debts are set aside in the
fiftieth year (the “year of restoration”) and all slaves are to be set
free. The Years of Jubilee thus seek to bring mercy, healing, new
life, and a fresh start. The term widely used by Jews and non-Jews
alike, shalom, means ‘peace’ combined with ‘right relationships’
(Bianchi, 1994, 43; Townsend 1994, 136).
-
Nonviolent images of God appear often throughout the Hebrew Testament.
God is expressed as merciful, compassionate, and patient. God will not
come in anger (Hosea 11:9). In Leviticus 19:18, too, we read, “Do not
take revenge on anyone or continue to hate him, but love your
neighbour as you love yourself.”
· There is a long history of reconciliation and restorative themes
in the New Testament, too. The most obvious is the “turn the other
cheek” admonition of Matthew 5:38–42 which is followed immediately
(verses 43–48) by the admonition to “love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you so that you may become the sons of your father
in heaven” (the text is repeated in Luke 5:27 ff).
· The Ephesian letter (2:14–18) reminds us that Christ breaks down
walls that separate people and that we are all one in Christ.
· The second Corinthian letter (2:6–8) speaks of ‘forgiveness’ for
an offender. “…[Y]ou should forgive him and encourage him in order to
keep him from becoming so sad as to give up completely. And so I beg you
to let him know that you really do love him.”
· Romans 12:17 continues this theme: “If someone has done you
wrong, do not repay him with a wrong … do not let evil defeat you;
instead, conquer evil with good.”
· Reconciliation was a strong theme in pre-Victorian England. For
example, one was not permitted to take the Eucharist without formally
reconciling oneself with others who may have been wronged by the
penitent. Legal notaries, writing formal declarations of penitence, were
kept busy in the days prior to ‘the communion.’
Which
brings me to one of the more obvious contemporary justice controversies:
the issue of the death penalty, a punishment clearly anathema to
restorative justice. True, there are many scriptures that condone divine
(and terminal) retribution. But there are others that speak of
forgiveness and divine grace. Paul’s letter to the Romans (12:19)
reminds us that we are not to take revenge “but instead let God’s anger
do it.” But Christian scriptures are not definitive on the issue. In
fact, they are entirely contradictory.
Yet
let me note, as an aside, that the USA (one of the more overtly
Christian nations on earth, and proudly so—even every currency note
proclaims “In God We Trust”) finds itself in the unique position
as the only country in the OECD to persist with the death penalty. In
1977, the year when the USA resumed the use of the death penalty after a
five-year hiatus, only sixteen countries were abolitionist. At the end
of 2005, 122 countries were abolitionist, either in law or practice.
More than one thousand people have been executed in the USA since 1977.
I am not here today to debate capital punishment, and I daresay I am not
alone in this room in expressing an abolitionist view, but I do want to
take the opportunity to remind Americans here today of their country’s
official love affair with the death penalty. Moreover, it is the
reverence with which the death penalty is held in this country that
provides one of the major stumbling blocks preventing the U.S. from
ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; 192 other
countries have had no such problem. The Convention prohibits execution
of offenders who were children at the time of their crime. The laws of
several states in the U.S. allow for execution of persons aged sixteen
to eighteen at the time of the crime. On March 1, 2005, however, the
U.S. Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons, a case that put
the little town of Potosi, Missouri, on the map, ruled by a majority of
5–4 that the use of the death penalty in those circumstances was
unconstitutional, as a violation of the eighth and fourteenth
amendments. As a result, more than seventy child offenders under
sentence of death across this nation have had their sentences commuted
to life imprisonment. So the stumbling block has been removed. But the
USA has still not ratified the Convention. I should add that there are
only two signatories in the world that have not ratified: the USA is one
and the other is Somalia.
Let me
pause then to offer my second proposition:
That there is no consistency whatsoever in the Christian scriptures with
regard to justice practices, although there are many scriptures that
celebrate mercy, healing, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation,
and encourage those who have offended against others to take
responsibility and offer restitution.
So
where do faith communities go from here?
To my
mind it comes down to a question of choice, and it’s probably a little
ironic that I chose a scripture to guide me in this that comes from one
of the more sanguinary books of the Bible—Deuteronomy (30:19–20).
Here
it is:
I am now
giving you the choice between life and death, between God’s blessing and
God’s curse and I call heaven and earth to witness the choice you make.
Choose life. Love the Lord your God, obey him and be faithful to him and
then you and your descendants will live long in the land he promised to
give your ancestors …
Bud
Welch chose life when he wrote the following in a 1997 Time
magazine article. You may know the name. Bud’s daughter Julie-Marie was
killed in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh,
who was executed for this crime in June 2001. Bud rejected the ‘eye for
an eye’ admonition that appears in Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, and
Deuteronomy 19:21 and preferred Matthew 5:38: “If someone slaps you on
the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too.” Here’s what Bud
Welch concluded:
To me the
death penalty is vengeance, and vengeance doesn’t really help anyone in
the healing process. Of course, our first reaction is to strike back.
But if we permit ourselves to think through our feelings, we might
get to a different place. (Quoted in Wallis, 2005, 302; emphasis
mine)
These
feelings are not easy to think through. I am not sure how I would feel
if a member of my family were to become a victim of a serious crime. As
U.S. evangelist Jim Wallis reminds us (2005, 49), however, we are being
called on to “do the harder, more creative, and ultimately more
prophetic work of finding and offering alternatives.”
Let me
muse for a moment on this issue of “harder, more creative” work. There
is no doubt that these are hard issues. Yet frequently one will hear a
conservative so-called ‘law and order’ spokesperson on justice issues
saying that he or she had to make some hard choices in, for example,
doubling penalties or introducing a new criminal offense or increasing
police powers. But that’s not hard; that’s easy. Anyone can do that.
Much harder is to balance justice policy that recognises the needs of
victims and offenders alike; that finds the right balance in government
expenditures (so that the correctional budgets don’t swallow up
education, mental health, and employment budgets); and that does not
simply foist today’s crime and disorder problems on future generations.
Now that is hard decision making. Next time you hear such a politician
tell you he/she has just had to make a hard choice on a justice issue,
challenge them to tell you how long that decision took and what evidence
they had to consider, whom they had spoken to, and what other choices
they had before them that they had rejected. Let me suggest to you that
you won’t be surprised to hear that it didn’t take them very long at
all. In contrast, in my experience, restorative advocates wrestle,
ponder, and work much harder to make the right choices.
Bud
Welch talks of a “different place” we might get to. What “different
place” awaits those who adopt a faith-based approach? Let me ask you to
consider that it can take us well past the courtroom into the
experiences of at least three Nobel Peace Prize winners. It can take us
into a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, post-apartheid, presided
over by Bishop Desmond Tutu. It can take us to formal policies of
racial equality in the United States inspired by many but principally
associated with the courage and vision of the Reverend Martin Luther
King Jr. It can take us to the Guatemalan countryside where Rigoberta
Menchú was first exposed to the Catholic social reform tradition that
allowed her to become an advocate for ethno-cultural reconciliation, and
a leader in the fight against exploitation, discrimination, and poverty
in Central America. It can take us beyond the justice reforms that still
just tinker at the edges of the complex social, economic, and cultural
factors that remorselessly influence crime and victimization. It can
take us toward a social policy founded on inclusion rather than
exclusion (Dignan, 2005, 187, see also Sullivan and Tifft,
2005,150–151).
In
other words, I believe that restorative justice advocates need also to
align themselves with crime prevention programs that focus on child
care, education, employment, housing, and social and welfare policies
designed to reduce the flow of offenders in the first place. To use a
common metaphor, we should not only be in the ambulance at the base of
the cliff but at the top of the cliff, doing our best to prevent people
from toppling over.
Having
said that, let me suggest some more modest things for faith communities
to consider doing in the name of restorative justice:
1.
Do some more reading. Here are some suggestions.
-
Prolific Australian Jesuit priest Father Frank Brennan (2006) has a
new book coming out this year titled When Conscience Votes. In
this book he champions the value of Christian dissent and reminds us
of the crucial role of faith at the table of public policy
development.
-
Jim Wallis, in his 2005 book God’s Politics, describes how
people of faith can rediscover religious fervour without being aligned
with political leaders who state publicly, arrogantly, and naively if
not dangerously that they have God on their side.
-
Larry Tifft and Dennis Sullivan’s (2005) book, Restorative Justice:
Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday Lives, asks us to
measure restorative justice by the extent to which it empowers
communities to “reach their potential to help people develop the tools
and resources needed to solve problems themselves, to develop a sense
of control over their own lives, and to see those with whom they are
in conflict as real persons with real human needs” (pages 94–95). The
authors’ concept of restorative justice as “needs-based” justice, as
opposed to rights-based or deserts-based justice, provides a
compelling argument and a basis on which to resolve some difficult
philosophical questions.
2.
Exercise humility: How much better off the world would be if we
could all admit our mistakes and forgive the mistakes of others.
Remember even John Braithwaite’s fictitious character Sam fell back into
trouble. Most of you will be able to recite the famous dictum of the
prophet Micah who admonished his people to “do justice and love
kindness” but he then added “and walk humbly with your God.” Oh what I
wouldn’t give for a little humility in our political leadership today.
According to a senior Palestinian politician (reported in the
Guardian, October 7, 2005), four weeks after the invasion of Iraq in
2003, George W. Bush claimed that God had told him to end the tyranny in
Iraq. Even if it’s not true, or even if he’s been misquoted, the
arrogance of many of the world’s leaders (past and present) in
purporting to express their deity’s wishes is often breathtaking.
Arrogance is not restorative.
3.
Seek repentance: The churches have much to be ashamed of for the
centuries of scriptural interpretations that permitted, condoned, or
encouraged slavery, racism, draconian retributions, ethnic cleansing,
the disempowerment of women, homophobia, and the denial or dismissal of
indigenous theologies. All of this was usually done in the name of God,
and with the blessing of the legal and political hierarchies. Repentance
is restorative.
4.
Sponsor a project: Seek out a neighbourhood mediation service, or
begin a prison visiting program; encourage a school to adopt an
anti-bullying project; teach your children and their friends to resolve
conflict appropriately; organise a peace colloquy that rewards those who
work tirelessly in this way to preserve the peace for future
generations. Challenge those who would build a new prison to ask why the
American imprisonment rate is five times the Australian rate. Campaign
against the death penalty if it still exists in your state or province.
When Wittgenstein was asked how philosophers should greet each other, he
replied, “Take your time.” Plan thoughtfully. Evaluate your work and
improve on it.
5.
Finally, seek first to understand: Some of you will recognize
this as the fifth habit in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits (1989). By
way of dramatic example, let me introduce you to an Australian woman,
Gill Hicks, from my hometown of Adelaide, who survived the London subway
bombing on July 7, 2005. She is certainly someone who has every right to
want her revenge.
Gill Hicks video (2:27)
Did
you hear what her call to action was? Was it a call to arms? Was it a
series of new police powers and draconian laws and penalties? Was it a
quote from the retributive bits of Leviticus? Was it a call to invade a
foreign country? No. She says, “Find someone whose view you oppose and
then listen until you understand them.”
Current themes in
criminal justice that promote severe punishment for those who break the
law and that use slogans like ‘enough is enough’ and ‘zero tolerance’
have ignored the growing number of voices calling for a greater emphasis
in policymaking on healing injury, restoring relationships, and
repairing the damage caused by crime. Currently we respond to crime most
often in an inappropriate, frequently inhumane and all too often
counterproductive manner (Dignan, 2005, 187). We need to add our voices
as Christians to the clarion call to reduce the amount of collateral
damage caused to offenders, society at large, and above all, victims, by
the traditional justice processes. Whose task is it to take us forward?
As one of Jim Wallis’s street organizers used to remind him, and I
borrow it today to remind you: “We are the ones we have been
waiting for” (Wallis, 2005, xxvi).
And so to my third
and final proposition:
We are all
called to minister to the bruised and brokenhearted who enter into, and
emerge from, the justice system daily, victims and offenders alike.
Restorative themes can move beyond the sanctuary into the justice system
and back again without too much difficulty. In the final analysis, we
are called not to judge, but to assist people to have a little more
grace in their lives.
As Saint Francis of Assisi was
reputed to have said, remember to preach the gospel
at all times, even if sometimes it means having to use words.
So, regardless of
your faith tradition, I pray that the spirit that prompts and guides you
continues to do so in restorative ways, and that your commitment will be
an inspiration to others to do likewise.
Dr. Rick Sarre
University of South
Australia
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Note: Australian spellings and
quotation mark system have been retained.
