Justice as Healing

Harmed people harm people. Healed people heal people. If we are to interrupt the cycle of violence in Oakland, if we are to bring peace to the streets of our communities, we need a justice that heals. 

The fundamental assumption in the dominant discourse about justice, however, is that when someone causes harm, the only way to balance the scales of justice is to cause harm to the wrongdoer. If I cause someone to suffer, I must be caused to suffer. If I inflict pain on someone, then pain must be inflicted upon me. “Justice” focuses on just deserts—inflicting pain, suffering, isolation, deprivation, even death—as the only thing that can right the wrong, the only way to pay back the debt to society, to balance the scales and settle accounts. Harming is the raison d’être and essence of our current system—a system driven through and through by the coercion of jails, guns, police, and courts.

We are socialized into believing that this coercive justice is natural and universal, that justice has always been done this way, and always will be. However, in the last two decades, we are witnessing a change in the way we think about and do justice. Humanity is now making an historic shift from a justice that inflicts harm to a justice that heals, from a retributive justice to a restorative justice.

Restorative justice was the basis of the well known Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa during the mid nineties. In New Zealand, since passage of a restorative juvenile justice law in 1989, youth incarceration has become virtually obsolete. New Zealand is now shutting down its youth detention facilities.

Closer to home in Oakland, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth’s (RJOY’s) pilot program at a West Oakland middle school reduced suspension rates by more tan 75%, and eliminated expulsions and violent fighting. The success of the pilot generated such excitement that a number of other schools requested training. In January, the Oakland Unified School District School Board unanimously passed a resolution adopting restorative justice as a policy system wide to address conflict and as a means of creating a more caring and healing school environment.

This paradigm shift in the way we conceive justice moves us closer to Mohandas K. Gandhi’s and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of justice. Gandhi declared: “That action alone is just which does not harm either party to a dispute.”  This do-no-harm approach is rooted in the Hindu principle of ahimsa, or nonviolence.

Both Gandhi’s and King’s concepts of justice arise from the transformative power of love. Dr. King defined justice as “love correcting that which revolts against love”.  According to Gandhi, “If you express your love – ahimsa – in such a manner that it impresses itself indelibly upon your so called enemy, he must return that love.…And that requires far greater courage than delivering of blows.” 

The contemporary restorative justice movement has much to learn not only from Gandhi and King but also from the ancients. Though restorative justice is new to western jurisprudence it is not at all new in the sweep of human history. For most of human history reconciliation and restitution to victims and their kin took precedence over vengeance. Punishment as we know it today was the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, in most indigenous languages, there are no words for jails, courts, and police. As with restorative justice, in indigenous practice the focus is on repairing and rebuilding relationships, and bringing about reconciliation and social harmony. The goal is to strengthen relationships by fashioning win-win outcomes. Justice is a healing ground, not a battleground.

Adversarial justice intentionally pits two opposing parties against one another in a zero sum battle to determine right or wrong, guilt or innocence, winner or loser. But in restorative justice, there are no sides. Parties come together in a circle with everyone focused on the same center: how the harm is to be repaired. Restorative justice seeks a healing for all versus a victory for one.

Rather than rely on the threat of coercion and punishment, restorative justice seeks to heal and transform the wounds of victims, offenders and communities caused or revealed by the wrongdoing. It is frequently based upon a process of: (1) Truth telling, (2) Encounter, (3) Apology, (3) Making Amends/Reparation, and (4) Reconciliation.

Instead of a primary dependence on justice professionals and the State, restorative justice seeks greater self-reliance in the community by involving all those with a stake in a specific offense to come together in order to heal and repair the harm as much as possible. Restorative justice helps to move from the sense of an individualistic “I” to a communalistic “we.”

Restorative justice views a vengeful and punitive response to harm unacceptable, because, first, on a social level, it sets into motion endless cycles of violence and counter-violence. Punishment— tantamount to officially sanctioned vengeance—is a mere variant of the original harm. It replicates, reproduces, and multiplies harm, like a voracious rapidly metastasizing cancer, until we are almost totally consumed by it. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world blind and toothless as Gandhi has observed. It results in the destruction of community safety nets, ultimately leading to total social breakdown.

Secondly, on an individual level, a punitive vengeful response harms us psychologically. It locks us into the past. It immobilizes us because it tethers us to disabling definitions of ourselves. We define ourselves by the pain. We over-identify with it, mistaking it for who we truly are. Our attachment to suffering blocks the path to healing. Ultimately, rather than dissolve the pain, the desire for vengeance magnifies and expands it. We are victimized a second time around, but this time we are our own abusers. It is scientifically documented that hatred and anger eat away at our well-being, on physical and emotional levels.

In just 25 years, restorative justice has become a rapidly spreading global movement.  Not only has it been applied to the criminal justice system but it has also been used to address conflict in schools, communities, prisons, workplaces, and even in tribunals to heal the wounds of war and mass social violence. Activists and scholars are now beginning to explore the possibility of using restorative justice to address mass systemic and historic wrongs in the United States inflicted against both Native Americans and African Americans.

Though neither a magic wand nor a panacea, evidence shows that restorative justice is effective. Victim and offender satisfaction levels tend to be high. This is especially important since victims are rendered invisible by the current system, which sees crime as a violation of law and not as injury against a person.

Restorative justice invites us to transform deeply held beliefs about how we respond to wrongdoing and conflict. It invites into the circle of justice-making all those affected by the wrongdoing. It invites and challenges us to call forth our highest selves, offering apology and making amends for wrongdoing, and forgiveness for having been wronged.

According to cultural historian Charlene Spretnak, the massive denial of our inherent interrelatedness is the ultimate cause of inter-species and intra-species disaster. The delusion of separateness has engendered not only suicide, homicide, and genocide, but has pushed us to the brink of biocide, the destruction of the earth’s life support systems themselves. Based upon Gandhian, Kingian and indigenous views of justice as healing, restorative justice is the loom upon which the fabric of our sacred interrelationship is being rewoven. It is a beacon lighting our way into a perilous future.

We can bring peace to Oakland, one circle at a time.

Fania E. Davis is co-founder and executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY).