ISSN 1062-7421
Vol. 12 No. 1 (January 2002) pp. 38-41.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: HEALING THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR EVERYDAY LIVES by Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft. Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press, 2001. 261 pp. Paper $19.50. ISBN: 1-881798-31-3.

Reviewed by Anna Maria Marshall, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Retribution is the predominant value in the political landscape of criminal justice policy. Punishing criminals as severely as possible remains a persistently popular stand in electoral politics. States build more prisons to house the many offenders who are serving lengthy sentences for possession of small quantities of marijuana and crack cocaine in the much-touted "war on drugs." No politician ever lost an election for supporting the death penalty. This retributive impulse on the part of the public and politicians has only been inflamed in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The public seems willing to embrace
military tribunals-and their promise of swift and severe justice-for those who might have conspired to plan the attacks. Moreover, these unforgiving policies fall most heavily on the shoulders the poor and members of racial minorities who constitute the vast majority of those who are "processed" by the criminal justice system.

In their book, RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: HEALING THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR EVERYDAY LIVES, Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft challenge the retributive nature of the existing criminal justice system. They argue that the criminal justice system simply inflicts violence on the offender through incarceration
or even death, but does nothing to renew the victim's well-being or to relieve the structural inequalities that gave rise to the crime in the first place. Instead, they urge us to reorient our entire system of dealing with social harms. They claim we must move away from seeking vengeance and develop instead a needs-based approach that accounts for the needs of all the parties to a violent act, including not just the victim but also the offender and the community itself. (The authors reject the labels of "offender" and "victim." They argue that such labels impose a false identity on individuals. Instead, they refer throughout the book to "the person who was
harmed" and "the person who has harmed." I use offender and victim in this review for the sake of brevity.)

The authors' work fits in the tradition of critical criminology, grounded in radical social theory. Critical criminologists are generally sensitive to how conditions of inequality give rise to crime and examine the context of violence for explanations that go beyond the psychological idiosyncrasies or immorality of the offender. In addition, they are skeptical of the state, its definitions of crime, and its ability to inflict violence on those deemed to be criminals. In keeping with this tradition,
the authors are deeply critical of the existing criminal justice system-what they call "the judicial industrial complex." They argue that this complex is based on prevailing notions of "deserts-based justice" (p. 103). Reflecting

Page 39 begins here

radically individualistic values, our social system assumes that because of their natural talents and the application of those talents, everyone gets what they deserve. This applies not just to material success, but also to prestige and power: some individuals just seem to count more in our society than others. In the existing criminal justice system, when someone is harmed, the most common response is to inflict a counter-harm on the offender by imposing a punishment. And, as the authors emphasize, the punishments that our society currently inflicts have become increasingly violent.

Sullivan and Tifft argue instead for a program of restorative justice that would be geared towards meeting the needs of everyone in society, including those who did the harm. According to the authors, restorative justice programs have several different elements in common. First, such programs are grounded in a "political economy of relationship" based on needs, rather than desert. This different emphasis makes it important to account for the needs of everyone in society: "Such an approach toward justice puts a great premium on the participation of everyone, and on the expression of the voice of each. In other words, the well-being of everyone involved in a given social situation is taken into account: that is everyone involved is listened to, interacted with, or responded to on the basis of her
or his present needs" (p. 113). Second, restorative justice programs reject the violence associated with punishment and focus instead on healing broken relationships. Third, restorative justice requires open communication about the harm caused and public acknowledgment of the victim's pain. But the victim is not the only one doing the talking. The offender must also offer his account of the incident. Finally, the community must take an active role in resolving these problems. They must be present at the restorative process itself, but they must also begin to rebuild their communities.

Restorative justice programs can take many forms, and the authors offer descriptions of several types that they regard as most promising, including Navajo peacemaking, family group conferencing, community sentencing, and victim-offender reconciliation programs. According to the authors, the most successful restorative justice programs share several prominent features. For example, the conferences do not simply consist of the victim and the offender and a mediator. Rather, family members, community leaders, neighbors all join the proceedings and become part of the solution. In addition, these programs also focus on determining the underlying causes of crime, rather than simply addressing the behavior of the individual who caused the harm. Thus, all the social relationships implicated in the incident are examined and questioned in an effort to find an explanation for the conduct and to fashion an appropriate response.

The authors provide several models of restorative justice programs, such as the Navajo peace-making rituals. For each program the authors describe, they juxtapose the restorative justice process against the culture that produced the process. Among the Navajo, for example, solidarity and kinship are important cultural values. Thus, when a member of the community inflicts a harm on another, the Navajo believe that the offender has become detached from their important social connections-family, friends, and neighbors. The peace-making ritual, then, is designed to re-establish these connections. The ritual is attended not just by those involved in the incident, but also by their families and friends and by anyone else affected. Beginning with a prayer, the

Page 40 begins here

peace-maker encourages all the participants to offer their stories. Without having to observe rules of evidence, the participants are free to place the conflict in the broader context of their personal and relational histories. At the end, the peace-maker offers a personal narrative, relating the problem in question to Navajo myths and cultural traditions. In this narrative, the peace-maker offers a perspective on how the harm may be redressed. Although compensation is sometimes offered to the victim, it is secondary to the overarching goal of healing broken relationships.

Although they are zealous advocates of restorative justice programs, Sullivan and Tifft are skeptical about the chances for success for such programs, particularly when they are connected to the existing criminal justice system. They recognize that the criminal justice system is not set up to address all the problems of a community, such as the serious structural problems of inequality, poverty, poor education, unemployment that contribute to social disorganization. Thus, restorative justice programs connected to the formal criminal justice system are likely to offer only limited possibilities for restoration and reintegration. In addition, they are
critical of programs that are sometimes labeled "restorative" but that focus exclusively on making the victim feel better. In some jurisdictions, for example, offenders are required to offer victims restitution in addition to receiving traditional criminal punishments, but compensation is the only form of restorative justice. Another example are programs where victims can confront offenders with stories about how the crime affected the victims' lives. Because they do not address the offenders' needs or offer them an opportunity to participate, such programs are not actually restorative.

Beyond their interest in the workings of the criminal justice system, the authors of RESTORATIVE JUSTICE are making a broad appeal grounded in social theory and activism for pursuing restorative justice. They argue that punishing individuals for their violent acts can only produce more violence. They urge that the root causes of violence can be found in oppressive social conditions - poverty, crumbling schools, poor health care and housing. These conditions constitute a whole set of social harms-violence, in fact-caused by the excesses of capitalism. Against this backdrop, restorative justice is not simply a mechanism for conflict resolution. Rather, it is a program of social transformation. In this transformation, communities are constituted by personal ties and social arrangements "that promote patterns of
interaction that are non-hierarchical, non-power-based and abandon the exercise of power against offenders. Instead, communities embrace the needs of all when redressing social harms.

Given that RESTORATIVE JUSTICE is largely a theoretical work, the authors do not offer much empirical support for their arguments. At its most convincing, the book relies on secondary sources to describe restorative justice programs in other countries, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The book would have benefited from more examples and from more detailed accounts of the examples the authors offered. Less convincing is the authors' use of personal stories and anecdotes to illustrate their theoretical themes. Some of these stories seemed inapplicable to the points they were making, and thus distracting from the argument.

In addition, the authors' grounding of restorative justice in "everyday life" is based on a questionable theoretical

Page 41 begins here

orientation toward the "self." According to the authors, our deserts-based social system damages the sense of self because the system emphasizes money and power. The authors urge use to reject these false selves and instead re-establish our connections to others in non-hierarchical relations. In this way, we can recover a sense of self that is more attuned to our true needs and desires. This theoretical conceptualization of the self-of identity-seems to posit some primordial individual that has needs and desires outside of social interaction. This orientation toward the self largely ignores the ways that needs, desires, and identities themselves are socially constructed through our interactions with other people, institutions and organizations.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE provides a broad introduction to the theory and practice of restorative justice. As such, it would be suitable for undergraduates in a class on theories of punishment or criminal justice system.

**************************************************************************

Copyright 2002 by the author, Anna-Maria Marshall.