Thoughts on “restorative justice?”

[All Along The Watchtower]

I’m in the “sounds nice in theory from a distance, but rapidly falls apart upon closer examination” camp myself. Much like an end-stage-of-history Communist utopia.

And much like Marxism, there’s an is-ought problem in that it identifies a lot of genuine problems with the “is” but not only has a fuzzy and in many ways problematic idea of the “ought”, but has no means of bridging the gap between description and prescription without resulting in absolutely horrific catastrophe—assuming the implementation is taken to its logical conclusion.

You can’t get there from here…

[Antonio the Sixth]

It should definitely be a piece of the process of righting wrongs, but the idea that it makes for a complete justice system is utterly fanciful, as you say. It should be obvious to anyone with a basic moral sense that some crimes can't possibly be compensated for. It also fundamentally doesn't acknowledge the criminal as a moral agent whose character is of importance of society, which is simultaneously more "soft on crime" than even I am comfortable with while also being vaguely dehumanizing. And there are a ton of concrete issues that can crop up, especially when you consider that rich criminals will find it easier to do "restorative" work than poorer ones.

[Blue3]

It's a great idea, and we need to move more of the actual criminal justice system to this. But we shouldn't shift everything overnight, and not sure some things can work under it until bigger changes are made.

[satsuma]

Locking up criminals should be for the benefit of society at large. People can change, sure, but the state can't change a person's heart in a reliable fashion. It can only make the path of crime painful and isolate those who choose it from society.

For instance, toleration of robbery only leads to more robbery, as long as the robber suspects that he'll benefit on net. From the victim's perspective, it's an easy wrong to make right, though. The victim just wants their property back.

[John Dule]

So stupid it’s actually impressive. Not even my idiot hippie high school poetry teacher could have come up with a criminal justice policy this bad in both theory and practice, and she used to organize meditative drum circles at San Quentin.

[Dereich]

Locking up criminals should be for the benefit of society at large. People can change, sure, but the state can't change a person's heart in a reliable fashion. It can only make the path of crime painful and isolate those who choose it from society.

For instance, toleration of robbery only leads to more robbery, as long as the robber suspects that he'll benefit on net. From the victim's perspective, it's an easy wrong to make right, though. The victim just wants their property back.

I've found the opposite a lot of time. For a lot of first time victims, especially of robberies or burglaries, the loss of the feeling of safety in their home/car/person is a lot more significant to them than just getting back whatever was stolen. One of the big theories in restorative justice is that being able to talk with the defendant and understand them would help them get over the trauma of being victimized as much as it would help the defendant.

As for its effectiveness, its very limited. There are plenty of victims not interested in reconciling with defendants whose primary goal really is for the state to punish the defendant. There are also plenty of defendants either openly uninterested in dialogue about what they did or only interested in the parts of the process that see them out of custody or probation sooner with no real desire to change. In cases involving domestic abuse it can be an actively harmful process, giving an abuser another chance to manipulate and gaslight the victim into going back to a bad situation. Of the cases I've referred to a restorative justice program most were unsuccessful.

I've had several thousand cases as a criminal attorney. Maybe a few dozen were appropriate for restorative justice. Probably a dozen of those actually went through the process. Most of the successful ones involved juvenile defendants. That's where I think it shows the most promise.

[Mr. Smith]

Depends on the scale.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Locking up criminals should be for the benefit of society at large. People can change, sure, but the state can't change a person's heart in a reliable fashion. It can only make the path of crime painful and isolate those who choose it from society.

For instance, toleration of robbery only leads to more robbery, as long as the robber suspects that he'll benefit on net. From the victim's perspective, it's an easy wrong to make right, though. The victim just wants their property back.

I've found the opposite a lot of time. For a lot of first time victims, especially of robberies or burglaries, the loss of the feeling of safety in their home/car/person is a lot more significant to them than just getting back whatever was stolen. One of the big theories in restorative justice is that being able to talk with the defendant and understand them would help them get over the trauma of being victimized as much as it would help the defendant.

As for its effectiveness, its very limited. There are plenty of victims not interested in reconciling with defendants whose primary goal really is for the state to punish the defendant. There are also plenty of defendants either openly uninterested in dialogue about what they did or only interested in the parts of the process that see them out of custody or probation sooner with no real desire to change. In cases involving domestic abuse it can be an actively harmful process, giving an abuser another chance to manipulate and gaslight the victim into going back to a bad situation. Of the cases I've referred to a restorative justice program most were unsuccessful.

I've had several thousand cases as a criminal attorney. Maybe a few dozen were appropriate for restorative justice. Probably a dozen of those actually went through the process. Most of the successful ones involved juvenile defendants. That's where I think it shows the most promise.

     I appreciate the insight into this matter. If anything it demonstrates the real wisdom in the current criminal justice paradigm that juvenile offenders are treated with rehabilitation being a major goal (to the point that a judge speaking of punishment used to be grounds to overturn a juvenile sentence on appeal in California!). Children are still malleable, but most offenders by the time they reach adulthood are in a place where restorative justice can't do much for them.