By Sterling Burnett
Dallas, TX – Americans fed up with high crime rates have pressed elected officials over the past decade to get tough on crime. And they have - especially in Texas. We built more prisons so we could enact minimum sentences and make parole harder to earn. Sure enough, as prisons were built, the crime rate fell sharply. Yet we know prison is not the answer for every crime, especially for youthful first-time offenders.
So a criminology professor, the Hudson Institute and the City of Indianapolis have teamed up to try an experiment that offers something beside jail time to control crime. It's called restorative justice, and it's based on three principles - victim restoration, offender accountability and offender reintegration into society. Here's how it works.
The focus in restorative justice is on the victim, not the offender. So once a youth is arrested, a restorative justice coordinator arranges a conference involving the violator, the victim, and families and supporters. A specially-trained police officer facilitates the conference, giving the victims the opportunity to confront the perpetrator, explain how he or she was harmed, and ask questions of the offender.
The goal, of course, is to arrive at an agreement that satisfies the victims and requires the offender to set things right. These agreements usually include recognition of wrongdoing, remorse, service to the victim and perhaps the wider community.
Offenders sometimes fear these conferences. The reason is that, in contrast to facing the cops, prosecutors and family courts, it's hard to look good in front of the victim, the victim's family, and your own family.
The best news is that the program works. During the first two years of the experiment, the restorative justice program has met the needs of victims much better than the conventional system, as well as significantly reducing re-arrests of young offenders.
About 230 youths have participated in conferences and about that many in a control group. A very high percentage of victims are willing to participate because the perpetrators are juveniles and a police officer is present.
More than 90% of victims say they were satisfied with how their case was handled under restorative justice, compared to only 68% under court-ordered methods. Furthermore, 98% of the victims reassigned to restorative justice programs said they would recommend it to a friend in a similar situation. Only 24% of victims in traditional court programs said the same.
For first-time offenders, conferences also worked better than the typical dismissal, diversion or slap on the wrist rendered by the traditional justice system. Too often that has sent the unfortunate message, "It's no big deal." On average, juvenile offenders that went through the restorative justice program were 25 to 45% less likely to be rearrested than those in traditional juvenile justice programs.
Is restorative justice a panacea? No. Victims are far more willing to cooperate in cases involving youths rather than adult offenders, and minor property crimes for which reparations are feasible. However, the principles of restorative justice - especially paying reparations to the victim - overlap those of the civil justice system, and might be considered for dealing with at least some adult criminals, for whom probation and incarceration often are involved.
Incarceration is indispensable to the criminal justice system. All realistic people know that. Yet, given a chance, restorative justice also may prove its worth, especially for early offenders.
H. Sterling Burnett is senior policy analyst with the National Center for Policy Analysis, a non-partisan, non-profit research center based in Dallas.