Sunday Commentary: The Promise of Restorative Justice

I will confess that I am a relative later comer to the notion of restorative justice.  It was not until late 2011 and early 2012 that I was exposed to the idea when a group of citizens – Robb Davis, David Breaux, and Reverend Kirstin Stoneking – came to the Davis Human Relations Commission with the idea of promoting a restorative justice process, some sort of victim-offender mediation between the university and the students who had been pepper sprayed.

Ultimately, the proposal was unsuccessful.  The university was unwilling to engage in any sort of process with an ongoing lawsuit, and by the time the lawsuit was settled it seemed too late.  In retrospect, the process would have proven valuable and there are still deep wounds in the community that have come out as John Pike was awarded a worker’s compensation settlement.

It was shortly after this discussion that I came in contact with Linda White and did a lengthy phone interview in which she described the process in which she came face to face with one of the men who, as a 14-year-old, had raped and murdered her 26-year-old daughter, a decade before.

It was a remarkable story of a journey in which Linda White would meet with and befriend the man who, 14 and a half years before, had ended the life of her daughter.

“He told me that before they killed her,” she said.  “She forgave them.  Her last words were I forgive you and God will too.  That is much like my daughter.”

In January, the Davis Human Relations Commission had brought Sujatha Baliga to Davis to speak at the Martin Luther King event.

She said that restorative justice, as developed from the thinking of Howard Zehr, was a “process to involve to the extent possible all of those who have a stake in a specific offense and to address harms, needs and obligations and to put things as right as possible.”

She called it a “paradigm shift” or a “different way to think about justice.”  Today when there’s a crime, she said, we think in terms of “What law was broken?  Who broke it?  And how do we punish that person?”

“Restorative justice asks a very different set of questions,” she continued.  “It asks what harm was done, what needs have arisen, and whose obligation is it to meet those needs?”

In Yolo County, we have seen this year the implementation of the Neighborhood Courts program that looks to create a restorative justice process for low-level offenders.  While it is a modest program, those involved have already seen huge progress.

On Saturday night, Fresno County Justice David Gottlieb will be the keynote speaker at the Vanguard‘s Third Annual Dinner and Awards ceremony.  Judge Gottlieb, a 2005 appointee to the bench by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is currently the presiding judge of the Juvenile Delinquency Court for Fresno County.

He has been involved with innovative programs at the Juvenile Court, including FBHC (Family Behavioral Health Court) which provides specialized collaborative service for delinquent juveniles, CJC (Community Justice Conference), a unique predisposition restorative justice program, and actively participates in the Juvenile Justice Commission and Fresno County Interagency.

Fresno County has been ahead of the curve, with a Victim Offender Reconciliation Program that was founded in 1982, the first in California, and the Community Justice Conference, which has been duplicated around California.

In a May 2013 op-ed in the Fresno Bee, Judge Gottlieb argued, “I would not write this commentary or support restorative justice if I did not see the results firsthand. I have written amazing anecdotal stories about the transformation of some of our youth and the communities, but that is not as relevant as the evidence supporting the success of the program.”

“Foremost among the statistics drawn from two years of studies of the program is that recidivism for youth that successfully completed the program is 5%. So, of about 300 teens that have gone through the program, 15 went on in subsequent years to either reoffend or violate the terms of their probation,” he write.  “Compare this number with those that did not go through the program. Of 300 teens that were similarly situated but did not go through a restorative program, 25% reoffended — 75 teens.”

The judge said, “I have had discussions over the past several years with leaders within the Fresno County Office of Education and Fresno Unified, and I know that they are strongly considering movement toward utilizing restorative justice principles.”

“Through our CJC program, we recognized that by allowing teens to go through a restorative justice model, we were saving money. Fewer cases meant less work for all of our justice partners and more time to devote to other serious cases. It also meant less time for the juveniles in confinement,” he continued.  “This program has saved thousands of dollars to taxpayers, allowed kids to remain in school, has made victims whole (by obtaining restitution) and has contributed to a much healthier community.”

Judge Gottlieb is not alone in his belief.  A March 2012 article noted that Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said that “restorative justice can be an effective solution for youth and low-level criminal offenders. The power of the program, he said, is based in forgiveness and the restoration of relationships.”

“I believe it works,” he said. “It provides immediate closure to the victim, and has the potential to change the offender’s life for many, many years.”

Fresno County’s Sheriff Margaret Mims agreed, arguing that “the program would be effective as a school discipline policy. It does not work as well, she said, for higher-level offenders.”

“We have to start in the schools — that is where I see it going in the future,” Sheriff Mims said. “By the time they come to me and I have to deal with them, there is very little to no chance that this kind of program is going to work.”

But restorative justice can work for higher level offenses as well.

Ms. Baliga, during her January 2013 speech in Davis, referenced the story that the New York Times covered a couple of weeks before the MLK Day event, describing a restorative justice conference she facilitated in a first-degree homicide case where a young man in Florida took the life of his fiancée.

They didn’t think that his taking their daughter’s life somehow severed him from humanity,” Ms. Baliga explained.  “They were willing to grapple with what that interconnectedness between them meant in the wake of this unthinkable harm.”

She described the dialogue that took five hours in Conor’s jail in Tallahassee, Florida.

“As we worked together to fashion Conor’s sentence,” she said, the mother of the victim “looked Conor in the eye and said these words, ‘Conor now you have the burden of doing the good works of two people because Ann (the victim) would have done wonderful things with her life.’ “

“When Kate (the mother) said this, she was living Dr. King’s definition of justice,” Ms. Baliga said.  “That justice is… ‘love correcting that which revolts against love.’ “

Conor would receive a 20-year prison sentence.  That sentence was followed by a term of parole that included the things the family of the victim needed to see in order for Conor to redeem himself.

“This was in lieu of mandatory life,” Ms. Baliga said.  She said that the family was happy with this outcome, “although they would have preferred to see Conor do ten years – instead of twenty – that’s what they asked for.  His second ten years would have been that time where he was doing acts within the community.”

“One of the things that they asked for that was so astounding was that he would really educate himself about teen dating violence and speak on stages with them in high schools across the state of Florida about what he had done, what he had learned, and what lessons he had for teenagers in difficult relationships,” she said.

“Some people think this is crazy,” she continued.  “Meeting face to face with people who have done them wrong, even in murder cases.  I would suggest that our present system of justice is far crazier.”

We agree.  We believe that the current justice system does not work.  We lock away offenders for years at a time.  They are denied rights under the law upon release.  They have little in the way of skills and while they have served their time, they have never had to accept true responsibility or understand the impact of their actions on others.

We do not offer restorative justice as a panacea.  In all of these programs, it is clear that there are some people who are good candidates for the process, while others are not.  However, changing the way we approach crime and punishment, even starting at the lowest levels, is a process that we believe is worthwhile.

On Saturday from 5 to 9 pm at the Veteran’s Memorial Center in Davis, we will have our annual dinner and awards ceremony.  Judge David Gottlieb will be the keynote speaker starting at about 7 pm.

Expected to join him will be Tim Nightingale, who is the current executive director of the Fresno County Victim Offender Reconciliation Program.

For more information click here

Or click here to purchase tickets:

—David M. Greenwald reporting