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their communities. The traditional criminal justice system does none of these things. In fact, it actively discourages them.
“Restorative Justice is a very fundamentally different approach to doing justice,” says Dr. Mark Umbreit, director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota. Unlike the current offender-driven system, “crime victims, offenders, and community folks are actively engaged in holding offenders accountable and having their needs met, but not in a vigilante way.”
Our traditional criminal justice system, he says, “alienates crime victims. They have no legal standing, and the process often revictimizes them.” As for the offenders, even with all the get-tough-on-crime talk, “we shield them from what they’ve done and from coming face-to-face with the victim,” he explains. “We focus on their weight-lifting needs in prison, but not their need to know what they did.”
“Restorative Justice is a very fundamentally different approach to doing justice,” says Dr. Mark Umbreit, director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota. Unlike the current offender-
Our traditional criminal justice system, he says, “alienates crime victims. They have no legal standing, and the process often revictimizes them.” As for the offenders, even with all the get-
A different way of doing justice
RJ is catching on. More than 45 states have developed 300 RJ programs. The American Bar Association has endorsed victim-offender mediation and recommends its development in all U.S. courts. Europe has more than 900 programs. RJ most often deals with first-time offenders and juveniles, usually for minor and property crimes. Empirical studies conducted by Umbreit and others show these programs are having measurable positive results in the form of much higher restitution and lower recidivism rates than the traditional criminal justice system. As the cases of Ward-Kaiser and Avila illustrate, RJ is also being used for more serious, even violent, crimes. Even when restitution or total repair of the damage is not possible, as with murder, rape, or drunk driving fatalities, victims typically come away satisfied with being able to have their concerns listened to and questions answered by the offender. For their part, offenders can find peace within themselves as they take personal responsibility for their actions and make amends as best they can.
Ward-Kaiser, who is Catholic, was unfamiliar with RJ during the trials of the five offenders and approached them from her religious perspective. When she went to court and looked at the four young men who had committed this crime and the 16-year-old girl who drove the getaway car, “I didn’t hate them,” she recalls. “You make the choice to hate. It’s wrong, it’s not what God told me to do.” With that realization, she says, “I got my power back” – a crucial aspect of a victim’s healing. After she learned about RJ in the form of the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program (VORP), she wanted to meet with some of the offenders, and two of them agreed to the VORP process. She helped the girl receive rehabilitation and schooling during her imprisonment and has told the man who kept her pinned down
Ward-
