Abstract
Many are familiar with the concept and practice of restorative justice (RJ). In the UK, it is an established part of the criminal justice system. It is a means of rehabilitating offenders and helping victims by bringing both together so that offenders can better appreciate the impact of their crime on the victims and the victims can find answers to some of their questions from the offender. It requires both to be willing to take part. It is not an alternative to the justice of the courts, but stands alongside it. In South Yorkshire, for instance, I commission RJ for perpetrators and victims of every type of crime, and there is evidence that it contributes towards reducing reoffending.
RJ has Christian origins – specifically among those who stand in the tradition of Christian pacifism. However, Noakes-Duncan believes that this is being lost in contemporary secular society and that the full force of the Christian contribution is not being realized. His book is a plea that we think more deeply about the idea of justice as a relational concept – reconciliation – made explicit in God’s revelation in Christ as we have it in Scripture. We should think about justice from the standpoint of Christ the prisoner. In that light, we dare not ignore such pressing contemporary issues as overcrowded prisons, a broken system of probation, prisons as profit-making businesses, the high recidivism rate, and so on. We need to think about justice not in terms of punishment but as restorative.
This is about recovering ‘ecclesial ethics’. We recognize that behavioural change does not happen in a vacuum, in isolation from some societal context. Christian character and behaviour are shaped through membership of the Christian community, the Church. Similarly, in the wider context of our life together in society, if offending behaviour is to be changed, we need to pay greater attention to those societal structures that make rehabilitation after prison so difficult. Few Christians would want to quarrel with much of this. It is not, however, an easy message beyond the Christian community, especially in those places torn apart by the current outbreak of violent crime. The cry there, unsurprisingly, is for tougher, longer sentences.
But even if we have sympathy with what Noakes-Duncan advocates, the focus in criminal justice today starts somewhere else – upstream of crime. RJ happens after the event. The new emphasis is on a ‘public health’ model: treating crime like a disease, finding ways of stopping its spread, tackling its root causes. We seek to understand what draws people towards violence and crime in the first place and how we can prevent it. There is a challenge to the churches here too, since they have often become one of the few community groups still remaining in some of those communities blighted by ten years of austerity and crime.