Cherie Booth on Restorative Justice

Cherie Booth, a judge who is also married to Tony Blair, gave a talk for the BBC about Restorative Justice. There’s a link to the whole talk over under “del.icio.us.” Here are excerpts:

I've been sitting as a part time judge for ten years now and for me the most difficult part of the process is the sentencing. The defendant faces me from the dock while I explain to him (and it is usually a him) why he's going to jail. He may listen carefully but I often wonder whether he feels any remorse for his crime or has any idea of the effect he's had upon his victims. This impression has been reinforced when I've visited prisons and spoken to inmates. It seems that neither the court process nor the prison experience is
helping them confront their behaviour or its consequences.

And, of course, we must never forget the victims of the crime. Too often they sit in the public gallery - feeling marginal to the case, even bemused by what's happening. They're often denied the opportunity to confront the defendant directly with what he's done, nor given the chance, where he's genuinely sorry, to receive a personal apology.
Britain's criminal justice system, of course, has been shaped by its Judaeo-Christian tradition. Often this tradition has been seen as
punitive, advocating a retributive model of justice in which an angry God - or state - takes revenge on the offender for his crimes.
But there are seeds in the Bible of a very different approach - an approach known as restorative justice which has been pioneered in countries like New Zealand and Australia. It's now gaining ground in the UK, where it's increasingly used in youth justice as an alternative to the courts and in the adult justice system as an addition to the court process.

The approach of restorative justice is to see the offending behaviour not just as a crime but as a breach of a relationship; the relationship we all have as individuals with others in our communities. It emphasises repairing the harm caused by anti-social or criminal behaviour, holding offenders to account before their victims and often resulting in them making some kind of reparation.

Those of my generation who went to Church as children will remember the gospel story of Zacchaeus. It's the story of the
"very little man" who climbs into a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus, and ends up taking him home for tea. But there's a whole other dimension to this tale that only really dawned on me as an adult - because actually this is a story about restorative justice.

They went into Jericho and passed through. There was a man named Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector who was very rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but, being a small man, he couldn't, because of the
crowd. So he ran on ahead, along the route Jesus was going to take, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him. When Jesus came to the place he looked up. "Zacchaeus," he said, "Hurry up and come down. I have to stay at your house today." So he hurried up, came down and received him with joy.

Everybody began to murmur when they saw it. "He's gone in to spend time with a proper old sinner!" they were saying. But Zacchaeus stood there and addressed the Master, "Look, Master," he said, "I'm giving half my property to the poor. And if I've defrauded any one of anything, I'm giving it back to them four times over." And Jesus said, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of
Abraham."

He may be a Sunday school favourite, but Zacchaeus was also a
master in white collar theft. Tax collectors were outcasts in society - not just because they were collecting money for the Roman Empire, but because they appear to have been lining their own pockets at the same time. And as a chief tax collector we can assume that Zacchaeus was masterminding the whole racket.

In calling him down from the tree, Jesus is engineering a meeting between Zacchaeus and the people he has wronged. Initially, the crowd is outraged with Jesus for befriending a man whose behaviour has spread fear and mistrust even amongst those he hasn't stolen from directly. And who can blame them?

There follows a series of meetings between Zacchaeus and his individual victims as he visits them to repay what he's stolen. These are glossed over in the gospel, there are no details - but I don't think we're talking cosy fireside chats here. It must be very uncomfortable for Zacchaeus to hear first hand what it feels like to be on the receiving end of his extortion.

Such face to face meetings between offenders and victims lie at the heart of the restorative justice process. The focus begins with the victims as they are encouraged to talk about the effect the crime has had on them. Then it is the turn of the offender to talk about why he committed the crime, what led up to it and how he feels about it now.

It's not appropriate to hold such meetings where the offender
continues denying his guilt. And even where he has admitted his wrongdoing he may still approach a meeting with his victim with little sense of remorse, wanting to deny responsibility or to claim mitigating circumstances. But it's not so easy to deny the consequences of your actions when your victim is sitting across the table from you. Rationalisations such as "they asked for it",
"it wasn't worth much anyway", tend to fall away in the face of injured human flesh and blood.

When faced with what he had done, Zacchaeus' immediate impulse was to make some reparation to his victims, paying them four times the amount he'd stolen from them. And the idea of reparation is a key element in the Restorative Justice process. However, the most effective form of reparation is usually, simply, a genuine apology. It's the single most important thing a victim values.

Some, I know, will say it makes for a nice ending to a Bible story, but isn't it just plain naïve to suggest that the principles of restorative justice can work for 21st century Britain? The evidence is that they
can. Not with everyone, of course, but they can work even with those who at first sight might appear hardened, serial criminals, those who might be branded no-hopers. In fact, evidence from the recent Sherman Report suggests that the restorative justice approach can be most effective in reducing re-offending where the offenders have committed serious, personal and violent crimes.