Book reviewDonald B. Thomas
Howard Zehr Changing Lenses: a New Focus for Crime and Justice Scottdale, Pennsylvania and Waterloo, Ontario: Herald Press, 1990. 280 p. Some years ago thieves broke into our house in the middle of the day. They locked the maid in her room, loaded what they wanted into a pickup and disappeared. Shortly before they came a woman arrived ostensibly looking for a friend but apparently checking out the scene. Later the police told me she was due to appear in court and I should go and identify the stolen property. When I asked where were the men who had been involved, I was told that they were dead. They had been intercepted after another job and shot! I identified a stolen quilt as ours but subsequently never had the heart to go and collect it or check for other items. How can life be equated with a few possessions! Most people feel that criminals should be made to suffer for what they have done. There are often calls for increased use of flogging, imprisonment and even mutilation or execution. Mob justice is an increasingly common feature of life in Kenya but there is no indication that our current ways of handling crime are leading to greater safety or stability in society. Howard Zehr's book enables us to take a fresh look at crime and punishment. As a keen amateur photographer he chooses different lenses to get the best pictures and as a writer he focuses on crime from a different perspective to the one we normally use. He starts from an underlying vision of Shalom, the Hebrew word for a state of wholeness, which has the same root as Salaam or Salamu in Kiswahili. Shalom implies not only material well being of the community but right relationship with God and with other people. It is part of the covenant concept that is deeply rooted in the Old Testament. Crime affects our sense of well being and brings hostility to relationships. The common response is to seek some form of retribution. But Zehr contrasts this retributive form of justice with the restorative form of justice embodied in the Old and New Testaments. Retributive justice starts from the premise that crime violates the state and its laws. It focuses on establishing guilt and inflicting punishment; it makes the state and the offender adversaries; it largely ignores the victim and is concluded when either the state or the offender wins in court. It is concerned only with what happened in the past and not with what might happen in the future. It is narrowly focused on the demands of the law and ignores the wider moral, political and economic issues which may be part of the problem. The alternative vision of restorative justice focuses on reparation for harm done and the restitution of Shalom. The offender and the victim have a central role to play. Repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation are encouraged. While the role of the community is emphasised, that of the state is reduced. The writer does not minimise the tragedy and pain arising from violent crime and believes that the victim's suffering must be lamented and acknowledged while a search takes place for a solution that will bring healing to both parties. Both offender and victim should, if possible, be involved in that search.
There are now several dozen VORP programmes in Canada, well over 100 in USA, and related programs in Britain and other European countries. The New Zealand government has taken a particular interest in VORP as a result of pressure from Maoris for whom the concept of restorative justice is closer to their own tradition and culture. Howard Zehr has assisted the New Zealand authorities in developing a new system of justice for juveniles. Since 1989 all juvenile crimes, except a few which are very violent, have been diverted from the police or the court to Family Group Conferences (FGCs) through which families and communities are involved in the process of restoration after a crime has been committed. This has been described as the first truly restorative approach institutionalised in a Western legal framework. The New Zealand approach has been taken up in Australia and in Britain. The Thames Valley police has been running a pilot project on similar lines that has reduced the number of people re-offending from 30 per cent to 4 per cent. The initial success exceeded expectations and is likely to lead to changes in other parts of Britain.1 Restorative justice is widely practised in Japan. Common features are the offender's willingness to acknowledge guilt, to express remorse and to make compensation to the victim. Victims expect to receive compensation but are also expected to pardon offenders. This approach, which may appear too lenient to Westerners, is at least partly responsible for the low crime rate in Japan. Africa has similar traditions of dealing with offenders. In a recent publication from Zimbabwe, Guardians of the Soil, elders talk about traditional beliefs and practices. M.M. Hove tells the following story as an example of the way offenders were treated: The usual thing again was not to punish. Instead people conducted various ceremonies to drive away the demon. Somehow that had an effect in many cases I know of. There was a young fellow who was very troublesome because he had a sharp hand - he picked up everything he could lay his hands on. Having dealt with him, given him advice and so on, a big ceremony was held. He was given something to make him vomit or to purge him and he was told, this is being done to stop his free hand from picking up other people's things. This again is the token side of things. A purgative may be an innocent thing that you give people when they are sick. Sometimes, in very extreme cases, the person who doesn't go along with the others eventually was ostracised. There was nothing worse than that. There was no need for prisons. You are looking for a solution. What you need is a needle to mend the torn cloth.2 This is a far cry from the conventional, Western, retributive system of justice. The retributive system encourages the offender to plead not guilty even when guilty and if the state wins in court the offender is stigmatised as bad, as is the offence committed. The victim, the families and the communities concerned normally have no role to play and the problems of reintegration of the offender into society and healing the hurts are given little attention. Kenya has shown some interest in constructive approaches to those who are given prison sentences. The craft work of the prisons department which is displayed at the Nairobi Show indicates that a lot of good training and useful work takes place in prisons. Also, under Section 68 of the Prisons Act (Cap. 90) there is a facility to allow prisoners who have a sentence of six months or less, or are within six months of discharge, to be assigned extra-mural penal employment. This reduces the stigma attached to imprisonment, gives support to families, and reduces the costs and social problems arising from incarceration. But much more could be done. The approach that Howard Zehr has described is part and parcel of a wider movement to deal with increasing violence in society and to bring reconciliation to situations of conflict. The Alternatives to Violence Programme (AVP), which was initiated at the request of prisoners in New York State in 1975, has been spreading rapidly and is now taking root in Uganda, South Africa and Russia. It forces individuals whether offenders or members of the wider community to understand the roots of violence within themselves and to learn alternative ways of dealing with potentially violent situations. Adam Curle in his book: Another way: positive response to contemporary violence, analyses the causes of contemporary violence. Having spent a large part of his life trying to mediate in situations of violence he comes back to the basic need to recognise our shared humanity. What is needed ......... is the fullest possible development of our humanity, our potential as human beings. This means becoming able to escape from the mindless automatism that governs so much of our lives, from senseless worries and fears, from prejudice, from ego cherishing and irritability, from vanity, from illusions of guilt and badness, from belief in a separate existence. These and all other negative emotions are like a fist tightly closed around the heart. They imprison our consciousness within the narrow confines of the self. But to be fully human our consciousness must expand, gradually embracing all others ... including all non-human others with whom we share the planet. It means losing the lonely sense of separation. It means to be rather than to do.3 He describes the courageous work for peace and reconciliation by a group (mainly women) in Osijek in former Yugoslavia. Having suffered so much, they had taken a stand against violence and when he asked them how they could be so cheerful in the face of danger and the terrible threats they had endured they said. "We were faced with a terrifying choice. When we chose to face the terror rather than to dilute our principles, we felt liberated."4 Whether we are victims or offenders we need liberation from the past, freedom from fear and hope for the future. Zehr, Hove and Curle are pointing towards a world in which we can all feel liberated. NOTES
1. Guardian Weekly, 26 October, p.13.
2. Chenjerai Hove and Ilija Trojanow. Guardians of the soil: meeting Zimbabwe elders. Harare: Baobab Books, 1996, p. 58.
3. Adam Curle. Another Way: Positive Response to Contemporary Violence. Oxford: Jon Carpenter, 1995, p. 119.
4. Ibid., p. 125.
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