Punishment and Restoration

There's a line of thinking that pits certain conceptions of justice against one another. Thus, restorative justice is opposed by definition and in principle to retributive justice.

But you don't have to think of them as opposed in this way, and I certainly don't think that's the best way to think of them. David Schmidtz writes cogently of justice as a multi-faceted concept in his 2006 book, Elements of Justice.

In an essay published last year, I outline four approaches that Christians take to the relationship between punishment, specifically with an eye toward the use of prisons, and restorative justice. In "To Reform or to Abolish? Christian Perspectives on Punishment, Prison, and Restorative Justice" (PDF),  I argue that there is a fundamental divide between those who see a form of retribution and punishment as compatible with approaches to restorative justice and those who do not. I also contend that the classic or traditional Christian view of punishment and restoration, represented by figures like Chrysostom, Luther, and C.S. Lewis, is more in-line with what I call "reformist" approaches rather than "radicalist" approaches.

Daniel Philpott is an associate professor in the department of political science and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and has a lengthy piece in the weekly Roman Catholic periodical America that examines some of these interrelationships. Philpott makes the case with regard to specifically Roman Catholic teaching that in this case represents the Christian moral witness also affirmed by the magisterial Reformers. In a key section dealing with six ways to approach reconciliation and justice, Philpott writes of punishment, which

may seem out of place in an ethic of reconciliation. Debates worldwide pit reconciliation against retribution and punishment against mercy, but it need not be so. From a Catholic perspective, punishment is a practice that restores shalom. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church affirms its purpose as “on the one hand, encouraging the reinsertion of the condemned person into society; on the other, fostering a justice that reconciles, a justice capable of restoring harmony in social relationships disrupted by the criminal act committed.” For the masterminds of war crimes, only long-term imprisonment can communicate the gravity of their offense. Other criminal combatants, however, might be integrated back into their communities through restorative public forums like those Bishop Belo advocated in East Timor. Incompatible with just punishment are amnesties, which abandon restoration altogether; only when demonstrably necessary for a peace agreement ought they to be adopted.

Indeed, there are some people whose consciences are so seared, whose moral sense so corrupted, that the harsh stigma and rebuke of public punishment is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to promote the recognition of wrongdoing, acceptance of guilt, and movement toward repentance. Some people are only able to come to realize the gravity of their sins after years of reflection upon the wrong committed. A book by Catherine Claire Larson, As We Forgive, focusing on the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda, touches movingly on this phenomenon through a number of stories of reconciliation. "Rwanda’s wounds," writes Larson, "are agonizingly deep. Today, they are being opened afresh as tens of thousands of killers are released from prison to return to the hills where they hunted down and killed former neighbors, friends, and classmates."

It was also in recognition of this reality that a Kent County Circuit judge said during the sentences of two offenders last month, "At 19, you can't appreciate how much of a difference this will make in your life. But at 29, 39, 49, you will know." Judge Christopher Yates made this statement in connection with the forgiveness offered to the offenders by the mother of the victim.

Jonathan "Jono" Krystiniak was beaten to death in 2008, and his mother Susan Stariha was given a prominent role in the proceedings by the prosecution, an example of the integration of the concerns of the victims into the traditional criminal justice process. Before the sentencing,

Stariha gave a lengthy victim impact statement. Prosecutors also had given her input into plea agreements reached with four of the defendants.

Stariha said she forgave the young men and wants them to "go on to lead good lives." She even offered to do their community service hours with them.

"I don't want your actions here to be what you're remembered for," she said.

In this instance we see the compatibility of the love offered in a mother's forgiveness with the justice offered in the judge's sentencing. But the mother's love and forgiveness does not of itself dispel the need for some kind of punishment. The state, as God's instrument of retributive justice, therefore has a positive but not exclusive role to play in the promotion of restorative justice. 

Comments

[Michael Peterson]

The mother has no Biblical warrant to forgive the offense. Indeed, for court to give weight to her "forgiveness" in the administration of justice is deeply unjust.

Cheers,

[Jordan]

>>The mother has no Biblical warrant to forgive the offense.

I'm not sure what you mean.

[margaret]

It seems to me that when the state administers justice, it is acting on behalf of state interests alone... it is interested in the crime insofar as it offends society and society's laws, not on behalf of the feelings of this person or that. The mother can forgive the murderers for causing her anguish, but since the murder was not done to her, she doesn't have power to forgive it in a spiritual sense, and in a court of law has no jurisdiction or relevancy in forgiving the murder at all. Her son's death wasn't about her.

[Jordan]

Margaret,

Was not the mother wronged? How would that fit with the OT emphasis on the role of the blood avenger? I wonder whether the model of the state "acting on behalf of state interests alone" is accurate, and if it is, whether that's a good model. It seems to me that a different justification for the state's role in administering punishment that it can do so in a way that is more dispassionate and less prone to over-reaction (that is, more just), than that of individual retribution.

Courts take all kinds of factors into consideration when determining sentences. The mother's relationship with the convicted certainly seems to be a relevant datum, although I don't think it alone is necessarily determinative of anything.