The Prison Alternative

In 2002, Baltimore public defender Marie Sennett sank her savings into a home in an established blue-collar neighborhood. Her new life quickly became hell: local boys were congregating on her corner, serving as lookouts for drug dealers. Sennett approached Vicky, her neighbor and the mother of one of the boys, who told “yuppie” Marie to call the cops if she was so bothered. Stunned, Sennett did just that. The dispute escalated into a feud fueled by frequent police visits, muttered obscenities, a trip to court, peace orders, and a life-sucking tension that nearly drove Sennett and her husband from their new home. Five years later, a relaxed Sennett reports, “Vicky’s now one of my closest friends. We go out for dinner. We’ve helped each other in times of need.”

Within the channels of law enforcement, these two strong-willed women clashed over class values, teen delinquency, drug activity, and aspirations for their neighborhood. All legal options exhausted, Sennett, Vicky, and others on their block took part in a community forum run by the Community Conferencing Center of Baltimore, which trained them to communicate more effectively than their old confrontational model. This deceptively simple process, called “Restorative Justice” (RJ), not only ended neighborhood tensions, but also turned wayward teens into community leaders with bright futures, chased away drug dealers, and bonded former archenemies.

Derived from the Maori cultures of New Zealand, RJ has become a fixture in juvenile courts across Australia and Canada, has been heavily adopted in Scandinavia, and has a modest, growing presence in the United States. Offenders—from petty thieves to killers—typically come to RJ programs through court diversion, probation, schools, law enforcement, or voluntary request after pleading guilty to a crime.

Unlike conventional justice, which requires attorneys to prove guilt through evidence, RJ induces quick confessions by offering an alternative to incarceration (for lesser crimes). It also emotionally engages offenders in the suffering they’ve caused, arguably a more harrowing task than appearing in court and toughing out jail time.

The practice of Restorative Justice has many variations, but in all forms, it brings crime victims and offenders together in dialogue to uncover the circumstances that led to the crime and to track its emotional consequences, all the while urging participants to take responsibility for past actions and recovery.

Dr. Lauren Abramson of Baltimore’s Community Conferencing Center says that, more than an alternative or supplement to conventional punishment, RJ heals those involved. It offers victims powerful catharsis, helping them to resume normal lives. Its impact on offenders depends on their ability to see through the eyes of those they harmed.

It is a grand exercise in empathy, or in psychology parlance, “reintegrative shaming.” RJ can reveal that offenders are often victims too, damaged survivors of harrowing lives. RJ theory holds that an open exchange of experiences blurs the “us vs. them” distinction and shows that we all have the capacity to hurt others in certain circumstances. Trying to repair harm through support and caring offers far more hope for ending criminal cycles than blunt punishment.
In 2001, American taxpayers spent an average of $22,650 per adult in state prison. Even more stupefying, New York City spent $170,820 for each youth in a detention center in 2006, the majority being held for nonviolent misdemeanors and technical violations. For that tax burden, Americans get a 67.5 percent national recidivism rate.

RJ programs generate a much better recidivism rate for a fraction of the cost of conventional trial and imprisonment. RJ could save states millions of dollars over the long term, money could be better invested in public schools and job training programs. A 2007 report by Lawrence Sherman of the University of Pennsylvania and Heather Strang of Australian National University summarized data from four countries and concluded that RJ works even better for violent crimes than property crimes, that victims who face their offenders fare better than those who don’t, and that it reduces retaliatory acts.

Why is this promising concept still marginal after 30 years in America? Its grassroots nature is one explanation: small, underfunded non-profits continue to administer most of the roughly 800 RJ programs in 30 U. S. states. Then, too, some see RJ as experimental, tentative, or softhearted pap. Talking tough about crime sells better than “restoration.” And RJ may not reach its full capacity until we learn more about how and when to apply it beyond the realm of neighborhood disputes and petty assault cases.

Randy Duqué of Good Shepherd Mediation in Philadelphia attributes the overwhelming success of RJ abroad to homogenous societies. Sherman and Strang found that in the few international cases where property crimes went up despite RJ, the offenders belonged to marginalized minority groups. In the U.S., with its diversity of culture and values, RJ may work best only in tactically selected cases, which would restrict its spread. Some adherents to the RJ process, like Tomi Hiers who cofounded (with Abramson) Baltimore’s Serious Crimes Conferencing Program, think that the strength of Restorative Justice lies in careful screening and the neutrality of non-profit affiliation, and that widespread public adoption might overtax the concept. Lawrence Sherman, on the other hand, contends that jurisdictions need to build Restorative Justice “communities,” to invest en masse.

Lauren Abramson believes, on the basis of 600 cases personally observed, that the greatest benefit of RJ is the remarkable individual transformations, the hearts and communities healed. Marie Sennett agrees. “There’s a definite need for more of it,” she says today. “There are so many stupid neighborhood assault cases or harassment cases that have no business being in the court system.”