Hard or Soft on Crime?

 

Traditional discussions about crime often frame the debate as only having two opposing positions: Is justice hard on crime or is it soft on crime? Two areas that help define these positions are ACCOUNTABILITY and SUPPORT, and these are usually seen as rising or falling in inverse relation to each other regarding the issue of punishment.

 

 

Restorative Justice does not fit with either of these positions. That’s because it only works well when accountability and support are not seen as having an inverse relation to each other, but seen as both rising together because of how their best features can be combined.

 

high accountibility with high support is smart on crime

 

What allows accountability and support to be blended? It all has to do with understanding crime mostly in terms of HARM DONE. When the emphasis is on how one person has disrespected others or the community, justice is not simply a matter of PUNISHMENT but rather a matter of MAKING THINGS RIGHT. The real questions to be asked, then, are Who is responsible to make things right, and how can this best happen for all involved? Here we see how accountability is not a ‘taking’ (as in “you gotta take your medicine”), but rather a ‘giving’. Read more…

 

If crime breaks something, justice should mend it.

 

Why is Restorative Justice SMART on Crime?

1. Models that combine dignity-based support and high expectations of accountability result in offenders showing higher motivations to make amends, to make personal changes, and to not reoffend.

2. Models resulting in less recidivism save future costs that are paid by tax payers. They also save money as early intervention strategies.

3. Models focusing on the harm done satisfy victims and community members who want to be involved and see improvements on all levels.

SMART

Next time you are in a discussion about how responses to crime or even school misconducts are either too soft or too hard, shift the discussion to whether the response is a smart one, based on outcomes that make sense.

 

Predictably, youth who ‘get off track’ and do crimes and misconducts have lacked two solid things in their family life: they didn’t get enough CARE and they didn’t get enough CLEAR BOUNDARIES. In many ways, BCRJP, along with all justice workers, provide compensations for these lacks. In the same way that every parent needs to fully combine good care and good boundaries with their children, responses to crime, especially for teens who are still in development, need the combination of SUPPORT and ACCOUNTABILITY. Without this combo, they won’t have the right soil to grow their character in the very context of dealing with their misbehaviors. In this light, BCRJP looks at every resolution process as a chance for offenders to get back on the right track. In fact, some offenders never got off in the first place because they never were on the tracks to begin with. Hard-on-Crime responses to offenders with this profile have one main effect: it hardens them from truly growing and changing, and makes them feel like ‘victims’ of circumstances. How much better it would be to motivate them to become responsible for their actions as well as for the wellbeing of the community.