When our default response is to meet harm with punishment and isolation, it’s hard to imagine a different path forged with dialogue and understanding. But by taking that step, we can get closer to genuine accountability and repair.
HEADER PHOTO: Senior Facilitator Shani Douglas speaks at a gathering of restorative justice practitioners at the Center.
“I feel like I can breathe again. I feel like I’m free.”
Those were one mother’s words after taking part in a restorative justice circle at our Manhattan Justice Opportunities program. Not long before, she had been severely hurt by her own daughter, who had reached a point of crisis after struggling with substance use and was now facing criminal charges.
Typically, the case would have been handled in the courtroom, where attorneys would clash over what happened and a judge would decide what punishment to impose. Instead, this mother embraced an opportunity to do something different. She wanted to talk to her daughter directly, in a safe space where they could both express how they were impacted by what happened between them.
Restorative justice urges us to see a crime not just as a breach of the law, but as a breakdown of a relationship: the relationship we have with our loved ones, our neighbors, or our fellow human beings. It challenges us to ask: What would it look like to open up a path towards repairing that relationship?
That question is at the center of every restorative justice circle, where people who have been hurt sit down with people who have done harm to have a conversation. Others are invited to join the circle too: family members, friends, even community leaders like pastors, mentors, and advocates. They’re there to speak to how the harm has affected everyone involved, and also to offer the support that both parties need to piece their lives back together. With the help of a facilitator, the people most impacted are given the space to cast off their courtroom roles, let their guard down, and talk to each other.
It takes immense vulnerability from both sides. People who have been hurt, their loved ones, or other affected members of the community address the person who has done harm directly. And the person responsible has to confront the harm they have caused and take ownership—not just in front of the people they’ve hurt, but often in front of their own loved ones and support networks as well.
It’s a process of radical humanity that activates what Jennifer Gil Vinueza, Senior Facilitator of Restorative Justice, calls our “innate ability as human beings to really care for each other.” Circles like this might be new to the criminal legal system, but they’re much older than that system itself: many indigenous communities have used peacemaking circles for centuries as a way of working towards repair after conflict.
Once the legal parties refer a case to one of our restorative justice programs, opting into it is voluntary for both sides. “People often don’t have the language to ask for this different thing even if it’s what they need,” says Kellsie Sayers, our Director of Restorative Practices. Trying it out takes the courage and imagination to see beyond typical responses to harm.
For people who have been hurt, the restorative circle is a chance to express themselves in a way that’s rarely possible in court, where their story is mainly valued for how it helps the state’s case against a defendant. Here, instead, the people harmed get to speak for themselves. That comes with a sense of agency that the typical criminal process often takes away from the very people it’s supposed to serve.
It also opens up the space for real accountability for people who have done harm. While the criminal legal system is supposed to foster accountability, it often does the opposite, putting pressure on people to deny guilt and downplay their actions to protect themselves from even more harm.
Sayers has seen that paradox at work firsthand. “We’ve had clients who come to us early on and say, ‘I can’t believe I did this. I can’t sleep at night,’” she says. “But once they’re in court, they switch gears—‘It wasn’t my fault.’ Because now they have to defend themselves against a caricature.”
Without the dark cloud of incarceration looming overhead, people are set free to acknowledge the harm they’ve caused and the complicated feelings that come with it. “The circle offers them a space to say, ‘I think about you and your loved ones every day,’” says Sayers.
Healing doesn’t come easily, but restorative justice opens up a rare path for people to process the trauma that comes with being harmed and with doing harm. For many people who have been hurt, hearing someone take full responsibility for their actions can be a source of immense relief by itself. It also creates a deeper, more lasting sense of safety than many typical, often short-sighted forms of punishment can offer to survivors of crime.
As Vinueza puts it, “One circle might not heal the wounds, but it adds a little bit of care to wounds that have been caused by this really deep harm.”
When our default response is to meet harm with punishment and isolation, it’s hard to imagine a different path forged with dialogue and understanding—even when it’s what hurting people need the most. Setting foot on that path takes bravery. But if we’re willing to risk it, we can get closer to genuine accountability and repair.