Restorative Justice, Forgiveness, and Victims of Crime

Over the past few days, I’ve been having an interesting discussion via email with my friend Lisa Rea about the role of forgiveness in restorative justice. These mechanisms, as David Cayley (1998, p. 10) defines them, “seek noncustodial settlements; they allow both the offender and the victim much more initiative; they are oriented more to peacemaking than punishment; and they try to mobilize the capacities of families, friends, and local communities in correcting offenders and holding them accountable.” Restorative justice is, in short, a vision of justice that “emphasizes the humanity of both offenders and victims [and] seeks repair of social connections and peace rather than retribution against the offenders” (Martha Minow 1998, p. 92).

We both agree on the easy part, that victims (and co-victims) cannot and should not be pressured into forgiving offenders. But where we run into some trouble is what this means for the practice of restorative justice, which — to my mind — relies on a position of forgiveness from victims.

I follow Howard Zehr (2005, p. 47) in thinking about forgiveness, when he argued that

Forgiveness is letting go of the power the offense and the offender have over a person. It means no longer letting that offense and offender dominate. Without this experience of forgiveness, without this closure, the wound festers, the violation takes over our consciousness, our lives. It, and the offender, are in control. Real forgiveness, then, is an act of empowerment and healing. It allows one to move from victim to survivor.

Additionally, rather than the understanding of forgiveness to which many add the concept of forgetting, Trudy Govier (2002, p. 61) argues that “The memories that accompany forgiveness will be memories that exclude resentment and allow us to ‘let go’ while retaining the knowledge that these things were done, and they were wrong.”

As Hannah Arendt (1998, pp. 240–241) argues, “forgiveness is the exact opposite of vengeance, which acts in the form of re-acting against an original trespassing…[it] is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven.” On my reading, then, it is important to forgive both for one’s own good and in order to embrace the idea of restorative – rather than retributive – justice.

In the end, my sense is that if victims are unwilling or unable to begin the process of forgiving offenders, then a restorative approach to justice – with its emphasis on “noncustodial settlements” and “peacemaking [rather] than punishment” (Cayley 1998, p. 10) – will likely be seen as benefiting offenders at the expense of victims, hardly seeming to victims like justice at all.

Lisa, however, rightly points me to the Sycamore Tree Project, which brings together unrelated victims and offenders (in prison) to discuss “the effects of crime, the harm it causes, and how to make things right.” At the outset, it’s important to note that the Sycamore Tree Project — like its parent, Prison Fellowship International — is religious in nature; it brings a distinctly Christian perspective to bear on the problem of crime and, though the participants need not be religious themselves, they will likely hear a host of messages that are taken from the Bible and, it seems, they must agree to participate in some sort of celebration/worship event during the course of their session(s). All of this will likely be seen as very positive by some and very negative by others.

It’s clear to see the benefits that one could obtain by participating in such a project. And, in particular, I think it’s interesting to see how we might get around the problem of forgiveness; if I need not meet with the particular person who harmed me, I could begin a restorative process like this one without any sort of forgiveness … even though, with a Christian foundation and run by Christian volunteers, there might be an emphasis placed on forgiveness that will be unwelcome to those victims who do not forgive.

And yet, I have to wonder why a victim who does not forgive his/her offender would decide to participate in a series of workshops with offenders, especially if those workshops might be geared toward ideas of forgiveness. Of course, these workshops are conducted within the scope of the current retributive system (a practical necessity) so perhaps the victim is able to participate because a desire for retribution is already being met … which leads me to wonder how that impacts restorative justice, given that there isn’t a fully restorative outcome for either victim or offender. I suppose it’s probably the best we can do at this point…but I’m left with the recognition that a lot of unforgiving victims can participate because their retributive feelings toward offenders in general are still being met and because the offender in their own case remains safely an Other.

There are obviously positive and negative ways of thinking about such an outcome. On the one hand, we don’t really get outside of the retributive box that we’re in. But, on the other hand, some victims who wouldn’t consider participating in any sort of process that felt less retributive (and thus wouldn’t see any of the possible benefits of an at-least-somewhat restorative approach) will now take a shot at meeting with offenders. From such an initial meeting with unrelated offenders within the prison system, some victims might find ways to begin the process of forgiveness … and doing so could lead them to even more restorative mechanisms than ones like the Sycamore Tree Project.

That’s a lot of “might” and “could,” clearly, but that’s the territory of restorative justice, at least at this point in time and in this particular place.

More of my thoughts on this topic, as well as a bibliography of material related to restorative justice, can be found in an article I published last year (from which some of the above is drawn).

Some of Lisa Rea’s thoughts on this particular topic are here.