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Crime and Healing
“I have nowhere to talk about this except here in a prison setting,” Peg said. “You are my community.”
The circle grew close, intimate — sacred — as the three women spoke.
There were about 35 of us in all, sitting on hard plastic chairs. Twenty wore green: the inmates. The building was wrapped in razor wire. It was a maximum security prison called Columbia Correctional Institution, in Portage, Wis. Built for 450 prisoners, it houses, two decades after it opened, about 900. The setting was old justice, but something new was happening.
Not all that new, maybe. Restorative Justice — a multifaceted system of criminal justice and conflict resolution that puts healing and truth-telling at its core, not punishment, revenge or the culling out of humanity’s undesirables — has been around and evolving for about 20 years now. It’s slowly gaining a foothold in court systems and schools around the world: It is part, I’m certain, of an invisible wave of change that is transforming the planet. Nothing about it is simple, but something precious beyond compare can emerge from the process. Suffering can abate, torn lives and broken communities can heal, good can come from bad.
But these were not pretty stories we were hearing: a rape, an armed robbery, the murder of three elderly women. The tellers, Peg, Debbie and Tanya — the three angels, as many of the inmates started calling them — had been victimized by these crimes, and each spoke in unrelenting detail about what happened.
The women spoke on Wednesday, day two of the three-day circle process I took part in last week, led by Jerry Hancock, a former defense and prosecuting attorney who became a United Church of Christ minister four years ago and now works under the auspices of the UCC Prison Ministry Project; and former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, who is currently a law professor at Marquette University. The week was part of a three-month Restorative Justice class at the prison, at the end of which the inmates who participated get a diploma, and changed lives.
“My grandmother’s body was found in a field beneath a pile of tires.” This was Peg’s story. Her beloved grandmother, whom she called Mema, age 88, was, along with two friends also in their 80s, kidnapped and murdered — “kickboxed to death” — a quarter century ago in a Pennsylvania field. The killer had approached the three women as they were leaving an event. “Your tire is dangerously low,” he’d said to them. “Let me drive you to a gas station.” They accepted his offer.
Each woman spoke for nearly an hour, retelling their traumas in moment-by-moment detail. Debbie was accosted one evening as she was putting coins in a pop machine in front of the general store in her town. A man held a knife to her back, pulled her into an alley, beat, slashed and raped her. After it was over, she went home and took a hot shower to wash off the shame. “I looked in the mirror and didn’t know who I was.”
She had four children at home. Her husband had been working night shift. When he came home and found her still awake, just sitting on the bed, he knew something was wrong, though her first response was, “I’m fine.” He called the police. She went to the hospital. They photographed her naked, bruised body. “I was a piece of evidence,” she said.
Tanya was getting cash from an ATM when two boys — ages 16 and 14, she later learned — suddenly surrounded her. The 14-year-old stuck a gun to her head and held it there as the machine spit out cash in hundred-dollar increments. At one point she looked, with peripheral vision, into the gun boy’s eyes. “I saw nothing in his eyes,” she said. He later pistol-whipped her three times. She remembers each thud and crack as the gun hit her skull.
These women spoke not with anger but almost lovingly. They were messengers. They had seen hell’s landscape. Each talked of the impact of the crime on friends, family: the ripple effect. Debbie’s marriage fell apart. Her children were traumatized. Tanya grew estranged from her parents. Peg held Mema’s murder inside her for decades. There was simply no context in her life in which talking about it in all its detail was possible.
The context in which it was possible was Restorative Justice. We sat in a circle of equals. We listened and absorbed their words. Afterward, and over the next day, each person in the circle had chances to respond. The inmates began talking both about their own victims and their own pain. “Mema was with me all night,” one of the men said on Thursday morning.
This is only a sliver of what happened over an extraordinary three days. We talked frankly and from the heart about crime; we listened to each other. Something shifted, though I can’t say precisely what. Life felt sweet, fragile . . . precious.
“Be more than a survivor,” Debbie urged. “Be a lifeguard.”
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16 Comments so far
Show AllWhere's the "Restorative Justice" for the individual that spends years - if not decades - in this nation's hellhole prison industrial complex for a so-called crime that harms neither the person or property of another? Where is it? Can you find it? Do they get their rights "restored?" And what about "Justice" - you know, that squishy word no one seems to know ANYTHING about, but everyone likes to think this rotten-to-the-core country somehow upholds?
End the FUCKIN' DRUG WAR!!! Then I'll feel good about this BS "Restorative Justice." Until then it's all platitudes.
By the way, you do realize that there are some 70% of the completed rape kits sitting on "law enforcement" shelves that have NOT EVEN BEEN TESTED!! Is that "Justice?"
Mr. Koehler is an "award winning" journalist. Speaking out for the rights of free people kidnapped and enslaved for their choice of psychoactive substance is beyond the scope of the "award winners'" conscience. Mr. Koehler probably enjoys his "adult beverages". It reminds me of the old Bob Dylan lyric - "All the criminals in their coats and their ties are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise". If people speak out, they don't win awards.
Why are we congratulating these people, people who responded to violence with violence. Because they want to talk about it?
How about we start celebrating the people who have suffered crime and violence and choose not to continue the cycle.
Amen!
I'm with spaghetti_monster on this one.
The corruption in our so-called "justice" system is beyond redemption and this little tiny example of feel-good "restorative justice" would put a bandage on a bleeding gaping wound.
Generally I admire Koehler's idealism, but it can't replace good old-fashioned investigative journalism.
Where is that 14-year-old with the gun, today, for example?
-30-
Does anyone agree with me that this article fails to explain the subject with any degree of clarity? As best I can tell, Peg, Debbie and Tanya are crime victims or survivors of victims telling convicts about the crimes. It appears the convicts got "diplomas" and had "changed lives."
If the point is that criminals, especially those who physically or psychologically harm victims, fail to understand the trauma they cause until they get the damage graphically presented to them, okay. Having spoken with many guilty accused persons as a defense attorney, I've been amazed at the lack of empathy or understanding many of them had toward victims, or, in the case of "victimless" crimes like drug abuse, toward persons who lost life or property or sanity due to the crime. Of course, understanding such suffering means nothing unless the criminal can draw the conclusion that causing such suffering is wrong. I've met only a very few who seemed incapable of drawing that conclusion. Yet I'd be the first to say that some who empathize and understand these things may not be able to obey the law, even laws that incontrovertibly ought to be obeyed.
I wasn't sure either. It seemed like they were victimized so they became Criminals? I hear that alot in prisons, to me it seems like a copout I had it bad growing up, but I didn't pull a Colimbine at school. Either your are that kind of person or not. to me it's simple 3 strikes then into the Organ Banks. serve socity one piece at a time.
But I feel I wasted time reading about how these cons were running a scam based on First-Peoples ritualls.
Dear manning.
Mr Koehler has written articles for CD in the past about Restorative Justice. You are lightly brushing on how it works. Restorative Justice brings together victims & offenders so that a healing dialogue can take place - healing of victim and offender. Schools are using this same model for addressing student conflicts & resolving them.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-3 ("Returning to the Teachings," by Canadian Crown Attorney Rupert Ross.)
Restorative Justice is about healing our society. It works within the limits of the current laws and judicial system. Restorative Justice is a community's commitment to heal itself. The community, rather than a judge, determines the sentence.
Restorative Justice is in use across the US & Canada. Many law enforcement officers have training in the use of Restorative Justice techniques. We learn about it through the teachings of our Native People. Native People are teaching us that there are more positive solutions for our communities than incarceration.
For more information on Restorative Justice, I encourage you to do a Google search.
Lily_otv April 9th, 2010 1:01 pm -- Thanks. I didn't mean to denigrate the effort; the article just didn't seem to explain much about it. I will try to follow up on your suggested reading.
Forgiving wasn't mentioned, but I think is a major consideration. I believe there's a moral duty to forgive. Only if the offender is forgiven can he/she be judged purely on the merits with regard to the safety of others if he/she is released from custody, and then leave custody with a positive attitude. And only if the offender is forgiven can the victim truly find peace. But like friendship, forgiving is mutual or bilateral, and so I do believe that victims and offenders have to come together if there is to be forgiving.
What do you think?
Thanks manning.
Forgiveness is part of Restorative Justice. Rupert Ross' book gives great detail about how it can be implemented. Rupert Ross is a Crown Attorney which is equal to a prosecuting attorney in the US. Mr. Ross happens to be located just down the highway from me and communities in this region are very familiar with his work. His book was available at my public library.
The breadth of Restorative Justice is really too vast to explain in its entirety, here on CD.
I also have family members in law enforcement who are involved in Restorative Justice. A Judge in Thunder Bay, ON, has been teaching about RJ at the Police College for over 20 years. RJ doesn't get the media coverage that perhaps it should. That could be because the RJ programs exist in local communities, not at the state or provincial level. RJ Committees are made up of community members who know both the offender and the victim. Both are brought together by the committee for the healing of both parties. Forgiveness is a part of the healing process.
Thank you for your response.
The nation's number one crime is possession of a plant. This leaves more real criminals at large since resources are wasted chasing those who've harmed no one.
Locking up innocent people in violent institutions away from their families and loved ones is criminal. One day this will all be seen for what it is. Hopefully that day will come soon. Think of the innocent people who are subjected to violent crimes, and then find themselves locked up in the same violent place day after day. We all fund this with our tax dollars.
The article has something to do with "Restorative Justice" which seems to be based on the "Healing Circles" of indigenous peoples. Other than that it was hard to follow any thread.
If we lived in a more equal and just society, we wouldn't see so much of this violent crime. Look at Norway's and Sweden's rates and then look at the USA's.
Yeah, just what were all these people in prison for?
Here's a recent local article about this sort of thing...
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A74388
"Has prison itself changed since you've been here?"
"When I came into prison in 1976, everybody used to carry knives, just to protect themselves. You would not look at anyone unless there was an invitation to do so. Even the slightest thing could get you beaten or killed. Men were meaner then. And there were fewer guards.
Back then, you had actual criminals in prison. [Now] we've incarcerated more and more people, hired more guards who'll write you up or throw you in the hole for doing nothing -- for talking back, for not getting out of bed in time. Until the influx of cocaine and crack offenders in the '80s, this was a place to incarcerate bad men. Now it's more like an institution -- much more populated, certainly softer, but no more humane or closer to solving the ills of society."
I very much agree with manning120 and TheProf.
I didn't comment yesterday because I thought I was the only one who found this article mystifyingly vague and unfocused. Perhaps some editor pruned away useful context.
I "got" that it was attempting to showcase something called Restorative Justice, but it didn't sufficiently develop background to support the slightly smarmy and melodramatic description of the encounter group.
It may well be that Koehler has written extensively on this subject, but that doesn't excuse the deficiencies of this stand-alone piece.
before putting on my glasses, i thought the title was "crime and heating." the picture of massey coal was on the left, and my northern minnesota experience of seeing the snow fly through the hole in my roof where the stovepipe would go came back.
yes, healing is vital to well-being.
for peace and sustainability