Post No.: 0748
Furrywisepuppy says:
Shame can arise as a result of something that one has done to oneself, whereas humiliation can arise as a result of something that someone else has done to oneself. And bullies are often displacing their humiliations (e.g. for being exposed as academically lacking in school) onto others. Males in particular, in most cultures, are supposed to show ‘macho’ values, be seen as ‘strong’ and aren’t supposed to display vulnerability, hence this is one reason amongst many why males are more likely than females to react to insults and humiliation through violence in order to restore their reputations. So ‘toxic masculinity’ is part of the reason why men tend to be more violent than women. But this just brings about more violence.
Likewise, criminals can feel humiliated for being punished, so this can limit their rehabilitation. So rather than knocking them down, we need to build them up, such as via ‘restorative justice’ approaches that may include providing them mental health services and helping them to obtain educational or vocational qualifications. Rather than (just) punish them, we need to break their cycle of humiliation and aggression towards society once they leave prison.
Restorative justice is a form of justice that emphasises repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour as best as possible, via cooperative processes that involve all stakeholders. This can lead to reduced recidivism for the criminal and better closure for the victims, which repairs relationships in the community and therefore in turn is ultimately good for the community.
If tit-for-tat revenge is a form of punishment, and if punishment is a form of justice, then is revenge always a form of justice?
Well restorative justice states that punishment is justified if and only if it promotes restoration. A murdered person cannot be brought back to life by killing the killer, so such revenge would not promote restoration. Stealing from or injuring someone who stole from or injured you will likely just perpetuate a cycle of stealing from or injuring each other, and bring related negative spill-over effects within a community.
The restoration of peaceful relations can be achieved though, and this may be accomplished, for example, via apologies, repentance, mediation, drug courts (these are problem-solving courts that take a public health approach to drug offences), access to mental health services, repaying losses to victims in order to make them whole again if possible, addressing the emotional aspects of both victims and perpetrators after a crime, and ultimately facilitating the reintegration of the perpetrator as a contributing and respected member of society because one day they’re going to be set free again.
Restorative justice isn’t appropriate for all types of crimes though and it does require the input of the victims, who may not wish to go ahead with it under their own choice to decide. A big part of restorative justice is about getting the perpetrator and victim together for reconciliation in a safe environment, to talk about how the perpetrator made the victim feel, and for the perpetrator to apologise.
So of course it’s about helping the victims too. And relatively few victims desire revenge and would rather feel safe in the assurance that the same thing won’t happen to them or anyone else again; hence the value of furry restorative justice for them. It’s far easier to forgive someone when we’ve heard them sincerely apologise to us. The victim isn’t pressured to ever forgive though, but if they can eventually manage it, it will help to restore a bit of their faith in humanity so they’re not left unable to trust strangers ever again. Forgiving an offence doesn’t mean condoning it too.
It can also help a victim to understand the context or situational factors that caused an offender to do what they did, like perhaps they robbed because of a severe personal debt crisis. After all, we tend to allow ourselves contextual explanations rather than label ourselves as ‘pure irredeemable evil’ after every error we commit.
The victim seeing the perpetrator as only a human and not anything more or less, plus seeing him/her as remorseful, can offer the victim a way to move on with their life, due to an increased sense that justice is being served or has been served, a diminished sense of revenge, and hopefully a reduced level of PTSD if present. The perpetrator seeing and hopefully empathising with the victim, and taking responsibility for and being remorseful about his/her actions, may also help him/her to think twice about doing what he/she did again.
Neuroscientific research can also help enlighten us. And what we find is that – rather than subject criminals to solitary confinement and enormous stress, which, due to the stress hormone response, further exacerbates aggressive tendencies, tunnel-visioned thinking, relying on instincts like vengeance, and inhibits neural growth – we should offer a different environment that fosters learning and adaptation. And restorative justice programmes may fit that bill, where perpetrators meet with victims in a safe environment in order to help them take responsibility for their actions and help them empathise with their victims.
In contrast, prison is traditionally a place where people are taught to switch off their empathy and emotions except anger, and this isn’t healthy for the inmates nor for their communities once they’re set free. Switched-off emotions, apart from anger, is a trait of psychopaths. So we need to encourage the opposite. One experiment got inmates to emotionally bond with dogs as they trained them to become service dogs, and early reports demonstrated that this reduced the rate of repeat offending. Woof!
Vengeful forms of punishment can create or perpetuate a vicious cycle of hurt, even if they may seem justified. ‘An eye for an eye’ isn’t always the best response because it won’t always leave us feeling safer and in more peaceful harmony going forwards. You strike me, I strike you. One side creates NATO, the other side creates the Warsaw Pact. One side develops weapons of mass destruction, the other side develops weapons of mass destruction. We therefore need to explore ways to repair relationships.
Restorative forms of reconciliation can apply in any context, including in a parent-child or child-child relationship. Instead of focusing on culpability or dealing strict punishments after a misbehaviour, it’s about getting wrongdoers to take responsibility, make amends, and seek forgiveness. If a child apparently misbehaves – first find out clearly what happened rather than place blame. Ask the wrongdoer to think about how the situation made the affected feel? Get the parties to work out what a path forwards might look like? And remind them of their strengths more than what they did wrong, which will cultivate their resilience and let them know that they can change and can do better. It’s therefore not about simply sending a child to their room but working with them to get to the root of the problem so that this can be addressed in order so that the wrongdoing will not likely be repeated. It’s about asking, listening and giving respect, rather than accusing, shouting or knocking someone down – not least because we should lead by example.
Restorative justice was implemented in post-apartheid South Africa. So it can also help for these kinds of contexts too, where forgiveness and reconciliation is beneficial or necessary between entire communities of people.
We must not forget though that the prevention before a crime or hostility has been committed is better than a correction or attempted ‘cure’ after a crime or hostility has been committed, and this means tackling social injustices such as gross levels of inequality in society, because we’re often just blaming and punishing the poor, discriminated-against or marginalised for the structural reasons why they’re statistically more likely to commit crimes.
Most crimes are about people’s circumstances, not personalities. Broken/dysfunctional families, parental neglect and/or abuse, a low socio-economic status, poor educational support, and a history of being in the juvenile justice system, are frequent biographies of death row inmates. Understanding these risk factors and early childhood intervention could be important in preventing a person from committing a future crime. Childhood development and one’s early upbringing environment are critical in setting up the life path of any person, and prevention is overall cheaper than punishment too even though it requires upfront investments.
Some of us may wonder ‘why listen to or help offenders of any kind?’ It’s because learning about their histories, present circumstances and minds will help us to figure out what will reduce the number of offences and re-offences in the bigger picture and longer term – and isn’t that what we really want? Everybody has their reasons for being exactly the way they are. And they aren’t just ‘evil’ and we aren’t just ‘good’. Well we’re certainly not just good if all we want to do is hurt those we believe have hurt others. If we mirror what bad people do then won’t that make us just like them?
We are prone to switching off our empathy when a situation requires us to relate to someone who has committed an antisocial act, which makes it hard for us to understand why people commit ‘evil’ acts. We don’t really want to understand them – because it’s as if understanding their point of view would be to endorse or support their behaviour. We therefore end up blaming individuals without factoring in their circumstances and backgrounds. It’s biased because when we make mistakes, we’re usually ready to give situational rather than dispositional reasons for them! We tend to blame our tools or even other people. No matter how many mistakes we make, we’ll probably refuse to ever call ourselves ‘fundamentally evil’ and ask society to lock us up and throw away the key!
So it’s about the bigger picture of an offender’s positive reintegration into the community rather than the short-term picture of punishment. We talk about ‘correctional institutions’ – hence preventing recidivism should be the overriding metric of success, not the dealing of revenge or punishment. And although whether or not restorative justice deters those who’ve yet to offend is yet unknown – it does seem to reduce recidivism from previous offenders better than traditional prison system approaches do. Restorative justice programmes that focus on the perpetrators to address their behaviours, any mental health issues they may have such as addictions, and personal and social obstacles such as their employability when released, are more effective at reducing the probability of repeat offences than programmes that focus only on the victims or on retribution.
At the heart of all this, the public needs to see criminals not as irredeemable, not as people to shun out of normal society forever, but as people who need help and should be given support to mend their minds and their ways. This doesn’t mean criminals aren’t responsible for their own actions or rehabilitation – they are responsible precisely because of the fact that (for most, although maybe not all) they can change. And for most, they just need the right environment and approach to encourage and enact that change.
Woof. You can share what you think about the principles and goals of restorative justice over traditional forms of penalties and incarceration, by replying to the tweet linked to the Twitter comment button just below.
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