Peace is Crazy, but War is Worse

Tonight's blog post is courtesy of a fascinating Religion and Peacebuilding class lecture/discussion on restorative vs. retributive justice based on our readings from R. Scott Appleby's Ambivalence of the Sacred. So what exactly do they each mean?

The retributive justice definition fits the current US Justice system for adults, but not juveniles. Its focusing is on punishing the perpetrators, taking something away from them. Restorative justice says, "All parties were harmed in this crime, and a right relationship must be restored." Therefore, it is more focused on rehabilitation and making amends. The example that Appleby uses is that of Maha Ghosananda's work after Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia ( Eddie Izzard refers to Pol Pot as a 'genocidal fuckhead').

I'm having a hard time tracking down electronic sources for this, but in class, we talked about how Ghosananda was dedicated to restoring a right relationship in Cambodia, and was not in favor of incarcerating or even executing Pol Pot. In restorative justice, the perpetrator makes amends by giving up something, for Ghosananda it was sufficient for Pol Pot to confess his accountability for the crimes he committed but he would have to remain under house arrest for the safety and harmony of the community. And I just thought....WHAT????

Restorative justice is something very difficult to get my head around, but I am coming to believe in its power, even in cases like Cambodia. So let's say we go back in time and capture Saddam Hussein, we put him on trial to discover the facts of the crimes and he can either concede that he is guilty and offer to make amends, by let's say, giving up all his worldly possessions to the Iraqi people and agreeing to remain under house arrest for the rest of his life, or he can say "I did nothing wrong" and just walk away. Of course, the details of how it could have been done are much much much more complicated, and this whole process would have taken years and years, and he probably wouldn't have confessed. But the idea behind restorative justice says that the community is so dedicated to the idea that when the perpetrator says he's done nothing wrong, you have to let him go, but he goes at his own peril because he will most likely be expelled from society. It is a lofty goal, to have a society that so condemns violence that it will not lift a finger even against its violent enemies, but I think its worthy one, and even if it is ultimately unattainable in this life, we should still go for it. But of course, this doesn't mean we do away with policing, we just reform how the police are supposed to operate.

This is a very brief and feeble explanation of restorative justice, but it adequately explains my thoughts for the day. It remains a topic to be better explored.