Justice That Transforms, Volume One

Justice That Transforms

Volume One

Wayne Northey

foreword by Ron Dart

Justice That Transforms

Volume One

Copyright © 2020 Wayne Northey. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9794-4

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9795-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9796-8

To learn more about the author and about the series, or contact him, please visit: waynenorthey.com.

Permission to reprint the fourth chapter was obtained from the author, C.F.D. Moule; the journal where it first appeared, Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok; and from Cambridge University Press publisher of Essays in New Testament Interpretation.

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/06/20

Dedicated with respect and gratitude first to friend and colleague Dave Worth, who mentored me initially in the ways of Restorative Justice beginning in 1977, while I was a Volunteer Service worker (VSer) with Mennonite Central Committee Ontario; and who urged me to publish my writings.

Also dedicated to four women who significantly impacted my Restorative Justice journey: Ruth Morris, Liz Elliott, Claire Culhane, and Wilma Derksen. Ruth insisted on the more sweeping term Transformative Justice in place of Restorative Justice, and the title of this multivolume series honors that. For all four women, radical, fearless commitment to those caught up in the criminal justice system and beyond characterized/characterizes their lives.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: A New Paradigm of Justice

Chapter 2: Restorative Justice26 Then, Now and A Dream

Chapter 3: Presentation on Spirituality of Penal Abolition

Chapter 4: Punishment and Retribution

Chapter 5: Homo Homini Ubuntu

Chapter 6: Spirituality Evaluation of Restorative Justice

Chapter 7: Restorative Reintegration

Chapter 8: Restorative Justice and Prison Visitation

Chapter 9: Restorative Justice Spirituality

Chapter 10: Not Enough! and International Restorative Justice

Chapter 11: Is There A Place For Dreaming?

Chapter 12: Restorative Justice Stories

Chapter 13: The Sex Offender as Scapegoat

Chapter 14: Transformative Justice Vision and Spirituality

Bibliography

Foreword

There has been, sadly so, a predictable tendency within the historic Western tradition to read, interpret and apply the Bible within the crime and punishment, justice ethos in a retributive manner: an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, Shylockian pound of flesh dominating the day, fair Portia banished from the stage. A rather narrow and reductionist read of the Hebrew canon (Old Testament) has dominated and, in an imperial sort of way, colonized alternate notions of both justice and mercy that can equally be found in the Old Testament, Apocrypha and New Testament. The Jewish prophets and the Sermon on the Mount are two needful portals and correctives to a one-dimensional and reactionary read of the Bible.

There has also been a predictable tendency within the much longer historic Western and Christian tradition to develop, in greater depth and detail, via legal systems and jurisprudence, more finely tuned notions of Retributive Justice. We might ask why this single-vision approach to justice has so come to dominate and what other options might be mined within both the Bible and the Christian Tradition that question and doubt the reigning monarch of Retributive Justice? The answer to such a nagging question can be aptly and amply answered, from a variety of angles, in this superb book by Wayne Northey.

Each of the in-depth and detailed chapters in this must-read beauty of a tome highlight, in not-to-be missed insights, how and why the ideology of Retributive Justice has dominated, the consequence of such a reality, and why Restorative Justice has not really been tried and found wanting.

Wayne, to his credit, has spent many a decade in the restorative trenches (he was there at the beginning many a decade ago) and he tells a worthy tale about the need to, Phoenix-like, resurrect the Restorative Justice tradition. There has been a tendency to pit the liberal rehabilitative approach against the more conservative retributive approach, but the third way of Restorative Justice has many a possibility worth the fuller probing. The genius of the book is the way Wayne both probes ever deeper and thinks ever wider and fuller about these timely and timeless issues. Again, I might add that Wayne’s thinking and writing emerge from decades of being in the thick of the fray and the diverse articles embody such a reality.

The fact that the Restorative Justice position has often been marginalized, misunderstood or caricatured as a sort of naïve idealism is found wanting in Wayne’s animated and vigorous defense of Restorative Justice. I might add that beyond the importance of Restorative Justice is the broader notion of Transformative Justice that Wayne has often pondered. I have been fortunate, over the decades, to have had Wayne lecture in my classes in Philosophy of Law and other classes on Restorative/Transformative Justice. Students have raised tough questions about both positions and Wayne has answered each question admirably, well, charitably and wisely. This book does much the same but in a more in-depth way and manner.

The fact that Wayne engages Biblical exegetes’ questionable read of the Bible when applied to justice, the way the Western Tradition has erred in significant ways in this area, and how significant approaches by the Evangelical and Reformed Christian tribes have only seen with one eye on this issue are held up for serious scrutiny by Wayne in this packed and challenging bounty of a book. Wayne has lived in the midst of these issues at the Biblical, Christian Tradition and contemporary Evangelical and Reformed levels. He knows the nuances and subtleties but he is also acutely aware of how, time and again, Retributive Justice dominates the day (and the practical implications of it). There is a unique sense in which Wayne (although probably not seeing himself as such) comes as prophetic voice to the establishment and status quo Sanhedrin and dares to question their misread of the Bible and Christian Tradition. Again a careful read of this well-crafted book will, if read discerningly, reveal much that is often, tragically, ignored in how Christians interpret the Dostoevskian crime and punishment dilemma.

I have gently urged Wayne, over the years, to compile and thread together many of the articles he has written on Restorative Justice (and they are legion). I have no doubt that those who read and inwardly digest the articles chosen by Wayne for this unique collection and book will be generously rewarded by each read and reread. Certainly the way Wayne immerses the curious reader in the trying issues will refocus the way justice is often defined and understood. I do, therefore, heartily recommend this exceptional book to the reader with an open mind: their understanding of justice may never be the same again.

I might add, by way of conclusion, that George Grant’s English Speaking Justice will walk the interested yet further down the philosophic trail that Wayne (and peers) are well on.

Amor Vincit Omnia

—Ron Dart

Department of Political Science,

Philosophy and Religious Studies,

University of the Fraser Valley,

Abbotsford, British Columbia

Preface

My good friend Ron Dart, proposed that I finally pull together my Restorative Justice writings. As you see, I asked Ron to write the Foreword. He is also a prolific author and avid educator.

Two chapters were each time as indicated co-authored (though further added to/edited by me; thanks to Pierre Allard and Hugh Kirkegaard; and permissions given to include the reworked articles in this Volume.). One chapter was by Dr. C.F.D. Moule who thirty years ago granted permission to reprint it. It was powerful for me in setting a theological course in my future work.

Throughout most of the 1990s I toiled in the Restorative Justice field for Mennonite Central Committee Canada. That granted me a high perch from which to observe the increasing Canadian and worldwide awareness of this emerging phenomenon.

The 1990s was a kind of spreading-wings time of creating awareness, honing theory, delivering practice, and producing research. Criminal justice jurisdictions began encountering Restorative Justice in North America and worldwide. Many publications started emerging alongside beginnings of evidence-based research on impacts of this often-claimed paradigm shift (a term first used in this field by Howard Zehr, I believe) in dealing with perpetrators and people who were offended against. Whole conferences and umbrella organizations were organized and formed, to promote Restorative Justice and share expertise, the term best practices often employed.

Programs in many parts of the world began cross-pollinating as attempts at supplying precise definition and standards of practice proliferated. Institutions of higher learning commenced teaching it; governments started embracing and funding it; and critics, in particular from the victim (victim a term that rightly should be for the most part displaced in favor of those harmed by crime or the like) community, were analyzing and at times critiquing it as pro-offender and naïve. Some even accused it of being nothing more than compulsory compassion foisted on victims that left them further wounded, justice even perhaps (so thought) more denied while perpetrators were all but let off the hook.

Its sheer mushrooming across the planet within mere decades precluded controls that might have headed off some of the at times legitimate attacks.

But crime victim communities embraced Restorative Justice as well. Wilma Derksen in Canada early on affirmed it, amongst many others, and she parlayed it into a creative force for those harmed by crime across Canada and wider afield. She however ever held Restorative Justice practitioners and theorists to account to never forget those harmed by crime. A rare honor for Wilma was her family’s story told in inimitable style by Malcolm Gladwell in David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.

I had the (at-the-time-unknown) privilege of stumbling upon this early seeding through accepting an assignment in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada with Mennonite Central Committee Ontario as Director of the two-year-old V.O.R.P.: Victim Offender Reconciliation Project (only—acknowledging its initial tentative nature). It later became a Program, and rightly mediation replaced reconciliation as less religiously and even teleologically charged. Compulsory for those harmed by crime however never—at least not in intent of practice from the outset in my involvement then and subsequently with early and most practitioners and theorists over the decades.

As to seeding: an early Restorative Justice friend, colleague, practitioner and theorist, Dave Worth of Elmira Case fame (see "Context" in the first chapter), during those formative years of promoting Restorative Justice repeatedly drew on Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farm, Georgia, and author of Cotton Patch Gospel, to explain that if a farmer wanted to encourage others to try out new seed, he’d not go out and rent a lecture hall to get them in to hear about it, he’d plant rather a demonstration plot right at the main crossroads and let all see for themselves how well the seed produced!

Dave was one of those farmers; and eventually at the crossroads of the criminal justice world, the Restorative Justice harvest of justice became renowned for its peacemaking.

A classic biblical text in this regard reads: "When peacemakers plant seeds of peace, they will harvest justice. (James 3:18, CEV)."

The first chapter touches more on the early years.

My wife Esther and I had an amazing eight-week experience in Rwanda May 18 to July 12, 2018. We were exposed to much about Rwanda’s post-genocide (1994) Restorative Justice/reconciliation journey. We were left with impressions when we departed, with no particular authority gained to assess realities there. While in Rwanda I wrote a series of Dispatches about our reconciliation learning. They may be found in Volume Three of this series.¹ It was exhilarating and immense privilege to see Restorative Justice there in response to genocide taken to a whole new level.

Why publish these now? Because I can might be as good an answer! (I had learned how to do this on Amazon and Kindle in publishing a novel, Chrysalis Crucible. This volume first appeared on their Kindle Direct Publishing platform.) Because as well they may be of historical interest. And because they give opportunity to put out there the continued joy, challenge and prospect of this peacemaking work.

These writings were first gathered, edited, and uploaded onto a website,² project of my retirement years, from 2014 onwards. They obviously are repetitious: Copy and Paste commands were used over the years, as audience and/or readership varied. If the art of good teaching is in part repetition, may you experience this as good indeed . . . Let the reader skip whatever however—and do his or her own editing—if wished, when repetition is encountered. You will readily note my oft-used sources.

There is no suggested order of reading them, except encouraging reading the first chapter first. Each essay is complete in itself. The most comprehensive and far-reaching in application is the chapter, "Is There A Place For Dreaming?: Restorative Justice and International State Conflict, Scholar-In-Residence Public Lecture Saint Paul University, September 13, 2007"—to which a perhaps impatient reader may wish immediately to turn.

A friend said the writings appeared to him helter-skelter. I like to think that, rather than being in a disorderly confusion, they have a consistent organizing theme reflected in the series’ title, as indeed do all volumes in the series. There seemed no obvious chronological or otherwise progressive order to adhere to, apart from the first chapter needing to be so placed.

There was of course copy-editing, some further light editing, and in a few cases the addition of new material, but for the most part they are included as were.

This new edition has however included more, at times longer, explanatory footnotes, at times lengthier introductions under the "Context" headings, and other changes; including corrections to the earlier publication.

Additional volumes may be found as mentioned on Amazon and Kindle. I expect there to be about five or six in all. Another series of my general writings on peace and justice is projected, tentatively titled Justice The Harvest of Peace (as per James cited above).

And the usual disclaimer: all errors I own!³

—Wayne Northey,

with gratitude and joy for this lifelong

peace-full and justice-yielding journey,

Agassiz British Columbia, September

2019

.

Acknowledgements

Co-writers of earlier publications of the final two chapters, respectively Hugh Kirkegaard and Pierre Allard, were gracious in allowing these to be reissued, and in the last chapter especially, significantly rewritten.

1. They are also on my website here: https://waynenorthey.com/2018/06/25/rwanda -dispatches-may-18-to-july-12-2018/.

2. See: https://waynenorthey.com/; see also https://waynenorthey.com/justice/justice -that-transforms/.

3. A technical note: Wipf and Stock Publishers request use of American spelling throughout.

A New Paradigm of Justice

Context:

From a Canadian vantage point, Dr. Herman Bianchi, a Dutch criminologist, is one of the three grandfathers (if one must use that term) chronologically of Restorative Justice, together with Mark Yantzi and Dave Worth, the first and longstanding Restorative Justice practitioners/theorists in Canada. Though the term predates all three, and other related practices were taking place in the United States and elsewhere. There are issues in any event about referring to Restorative Justice as though a unified movement with a single grandfather or grandmother.

Contemporary Western Restorative Justice theory and practice were not first developed by Americans, though they have greatly contributed to its worldwide expansion. In particular Howard Zehr’s name stands out in the earlier and subsequent years; but not as theory originator, or first practitioner. A hagiographic myth assigns the term grandfather to one person, when there is in fact no such.

There had been numerous previous publications in Dutch by Dr. Bianchi. One such was the Restorative Justice classic, Justice As Sanctuary, which had been published in Dutch (Gerechtigheid als Vrijplaats) in 1985, and was eventually translated into English in 1994 through American criminologist Harold Pepinsky. A year later Dr. Bianchi co-edited Abolitionism: Towards a Non-Repressive Approach Towards Crime. My contribution was the final chapter seen here. The idea of paradigm shift is borrowed from Howard Zehr, in turn from Thomas Kuhn.¹ Bianchi’s writings have seldom received their rightful due in relation to Restorative Justice theory. He lent his scholarly weight as well all through the early years of Restorative Justice to The International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA)—see more below.

Dan Van Ness’ and Karen Heetderks Strong’s 1998 seminal Restoring Justice was comprehensive in its historically contextualizing Restorative Justice, and more encompassing than Zehr’s 1990 Changing Lenses. Dan’s impact on the early years of development was huge. His was also the first major website (under Justice Fellowship, an arm of Prison Fellowship), and it posted synopses of eventually thousands of resources.

Years ago I read about two persons on a crowded subway train in New York, where one happened to overhear the other say Frodo in conversation with someone else. The story goes that he literally dove across the sea of people, exclaiming, You’re reading Tolkien too?! In the early years of Restorative Justice, to hear someone in the criminal justice system use that term became a kind of instant bonding. Then the term began to appear in programs of criminal justice gatherings. And finally, emblazoned boldly on their sides were government-funded Restorative Justice ocean liners programs, when until then we few had to be content with small speedboats to spread the news—often enough early on running out of gas, then eventually at times initially swamped by the new ocean-going vessels . . .

And though there are other claimants,² Mark Yantzi’s and David Worth’s Kitchener Experiment/The Elmira Case in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada became the most replicated program model, arguably the first.³

There were also significant theoretical contributions and practices from Canadian aboriginal communities that take Restorative Justice back millennia—likewise in indigenous cultures worldwide—though again Dr. Richards negates ahistorical romanticizing about the claimed complete absence of retributive justice elements in those ancient-to-modern cultures. Canadians Crown Attorney Rupert Ross and Judge Barry Stuart are key early theorists and practitioners in this area.

A year after Zehr’s book appeared,⁴ Harold Pepinsky and Richard Quinney edited and published Criminology As Peacemaking, directly challenging the entire warmaking terminology and practice in criminal justice,⁵ calling alternatively for commitment to make peace with crime and criminals [which absence] is reflected in the paucity of our daily personal relations, where we live by domination and discipline, where forgiveness and mercy are seen as naïve surrender to victimization. The essays in this volume propose peacemaking as an effective alternative to the ‘war’ on crime. They range from studies of the intellectual roots of the peacemaking tradition to concrete examples of peacemaking in the community, with special attention to feminist peacemmaking traditions and women’s experience.⁶

It was from that amazing book that I learned ever after to describe Restorative Justice at its simplest to be a peacemaking, not a warmaking response to crime—one quite expandable to all brokenness in human and international relationships. Pepinsky and Quinney belong to the panoply of early Restorative Justice grandfathers. They also connected this strand to the wider peace movements historically and around the world.

One chapter below, Is There a Place for Dreaming?, picks up on the international implications of Restorative Justice, and was a presentation based on it that was initially made at St. Paul University in September 2007. I was the first Scholar in Residence at the Conflict Studies Department there, thanks to an invitation from Professor Vern Redekop. I spent a delightful five months of research and writing.

Another early influence were the many writings of Nils Christie. I first learned of this remarkable Norwegian criminologist through a program in 1993 by CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Commission) Ideas Renaissance Man and broadcaster David Cayley, entitled: Crime Control as Industry. I wrote at the time to CBC Ideas to express my gratitude for the outstanding three-hour set of programs. I had already read by then Dr. Christie’s classic Conflicts as Property, and his 1981 Limits to Pain. He continued to pen many significant works all within the Restorative Justice purview. Perhaps his most notable publication was the same title as Cayley’s broadcast: Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style?—in which he posited that not crime, but crime control is the real societal danger in Western democracies.⁷ With subsequent editions, Dr. Christie removed the question mark . . . He was also a prison/penal abolitionist (see below).

David Cayley as well, through numerous CBC Ideas broadcasts about crime and punishment issues, and a significant book publication, The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives, was an early Canadian promoter of Restorative Justice. Criminologist Liz Elliott told me that Cayley’s book was one of the finest she had ever read in the field. Though David was not a criminologist! Even better for me: since my 1993 correspondence with him in response to the Nils Christie broadcast, he has been a friend.

Also, though more tangentially, René Girard should be mentioned as significantly influencing early Restorative Justice theory, both over against notions of retributive justice, and more generally in helping early practitioners wrestle with generic violence in every culture, and the way out. Vern Redekop noted above, another early Restorative Justice theorist who is today a worldwide foremost scholar on conflict studies, peacemaking, and René Girard, authored the book most widely distributed of 14 New Perspectives on Crime and Justice: Mennonite Central Committee Occasional Papers, 1984–1994,⁸ edited by Dave Worth, Howard Zehr and me. It was entitled Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice: Interacting with René Girard. Girard himself gave his imprimatur to this publication.

Finally, prison abolitionism was also significant in influencing early Restorative Justice theory and practice. The International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA—which originally used the word Prison in place of later Penal") had its first Conference in 1983 in Toronto, which I attended—and several others. It was organized by Ruth Morris, yet another earlier theorist and practitioner. She was also a good friend and one of my five most significant mentors in Restorative Justice/Transformative Justice. This latter was Ruth’s preferred term, because Restorative was not radical enough peacemaking/abolitionism. Three of the other significant women mentors were Liz Elliott, Claire Culhane, and Wilma Derksen. They were/are fearless and outspoken women; in their various ways "grandmothers" of Restorative Justice.

Fair to say that, a little like sending out wedding invitations, once begun mentioning early practitioners and theorists, variously grandfathers/grandmothers of Restorative Justice, it is hard to know where to stop adding names—which in this highly diverse and communitarian field is as it should be.

I make no claim therefore to have just supplied an authoritative list. No one can, given the subjectivity of the authority, diversity of the field, and time-frame chosen.

Where I am insistent due to the longstanding attribution to one supposed grandfather figure, Howard Zehr, given as well his lack of connection/affirmation to and of most mentioned above, and want of collegiality for some of us in Canada in the early years, is in this: the notion of a single representative grandfather of a unified movement is unfounded.

Zehr once directly critiqued this author’s writings by telling me one does not attract bees with vinegar . . . I had already been writing and publishing, usually for MCCC, on Restorative Justice since 1977, and had in the early 1980s been turned down by MCCC in a proposal that I publish a book on Restorative Justice—MCCC felt it could not fund a six-month sabbatical for our family to allow me to complete such a project.

My longstanding commentary on the bees comment has been in accord with Ruth Morris’ watchword response to Restorative Justice as promulgated back then by Zehr and others of similar ilk: "Not Enough!" (See the essay by that title in this volume.) Ruth’s vision was not at the time in line with Zehr’s, though he liked to imagine so: hers was far more trenchant and grand—and controversial!⁹

Ruth would say, as do I, that a Restorative Justice out mainly to attract bees and primarily with honey—all sweetness and light—creates mainly a B-Grade Restorative Justice, one better than retributive justice to be sure, but seriously lacking in vigorous fulsome challenge to what Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day repeatedly dubbed the dirty rotten system, of which Western criminal justice was a key component. To further play with words, Zehr’s preference then for B-Grade was in fact to D-Grade the revolutionary potential of what Restorative Justice promised; a preference perhaps residual function of his Mennonite heritage that privileged being die Stillen im Lande—the Quiet in the Land.¹⁰ Western systems of justice have always been infected with brutal Empire/colonization and control/pacification motifs. In my retirement years, I have devoted a website (waynenorthey.com) to the Gospel as Counter-Narrative to Empire—the Ultimate Dirty Rotten System. There is much on the site in support of such a thesis.

One should not therefore be so much out trying to attract "B(-Grade)s, one should instead be creatively challenging the very WASPS" that run brutal justice systems . . . to as it were (for starters) repent, apologize,¹¹ make amends, and sin no more! "WASP in Canada is in fact an acronym for the White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant" Establishment—historically the very originators and guardians of such stingingly harmful systems throughout the colonized world. (Not that all working within such systems are necessarily directly caught up in their evil—though ineluctably tainted.)

What is needed, Amos (5:24), Dorothy Day, Ruth Morris, Martin Luther King Jr. and a host