Restorative Justice:
A Reflection of the Reign of Christ

Most of you here probably do not know that I did time in jail. In my last year at McGill University I went to jail for five years. At the time, in my mind, I was exchanging one jail, school where I had been for 19 of my 25 years, for another, the medium security institution for young offenders called CFF (Centre federal de formation) in the St Vincent de Paul complex of penitentiaries north of Montreal.

The warrant that is issued sending you to jail is in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. I did not go at the Queen`s command as is the case for all others sentenced to a term in a Canadian prison. But before I tell you why let me share with you an amusing anecdote about this royal command.

I am reminded of story told of Camillien Houde, the colourful gangster mayor of Montreal in the 1940`s and 50`s whom the people kept re-electing despite his prison time. The incident in mind happened when the City of Montreal hosted Princess Elizabeth at a dinner in the early 1950`s just before she became Queen. Houde welcomed her by saying, "Your Majesté, I am pleased to offer you da hospitalité of de Cite of Montréal even as you fader da King has offered his hospitalté to me many times!"

Going to jail for me, just about this time of year 33 years ago, was a saving grace. I remember thinking at Christmas time of my last year of McGill, "I`m not going to make it through this last term, I can`t stand to be in school another minute" As it happened I met Fr. Alan McFarlane, Protestant Chaplain to the Montreal area the penitentiaries, and he invited me to help him out. Thus began my career as a prison chaplain which would continue, on a part time basis, for the next five years.

It was an experience that would change my life. It was an experience that has shaped my perspective on ministry ever since.

So off I went to prison twice a week until I graduation when I persuaded the bishop to give me a 4 month reprieve from a curacy in a Montreal parish so that I could undertake prison ministry training with Alan throughout the summer. I began my curacy at St Philip`s Church in Montreal West in October of 1970 and on my very first Sunday had to pass through the military barricades erected to protect the Honourable Warren Allmand, MP and cabinet minister during the FLQ crisis. Mr. Allmand`s house was just a couple of doors down from the church. They were interesting times!

I tell you this personal story of my involvement with prisons, prisoners, and the criminal justice system because this is Restorative Justice Week. Many activities have been organized this week by community groups and Correctional Services Canada to mark this week and to raise awareness of the need for restorative justice. I commend, in particular, Pat Love and Graham Smith of this parish who both served on the week`s planning committee over the past months.

In its narrowest sense RJ (Restorative Justice) is a philosophy and movement that seeks alternatives to the traditional and current dominant system of dealing with of offenders and victims, a system that is often referred to as Retributive Justice.

Lorraine Berzins, a local RJ advocate and member of the Church Council on Justice and Corrections here in Ottawa, describes RJ this way:

Restorative Justice is a way to do justice so that healing takes place and this includes the important elements of: calling to account for one`s actions; reparation; dealing with the feelings and issues around it; dealing with the harm of the crime; but also of the harm of the criminal -justice process.

Quite apart from the hugely negative impact of the prison experience on most inmates- which was what I saw first hand as a prison chaplain- are important unaddressed issues for both offenders and the victims of crime. The failure of the present justice system to promote healing stems from the experience of the justice process by offender and victims both as an abstraction. That is, once you enter into that system the whole process is immediately removed from either offender or victim and handed over to professionals ( a powerful elite of police, judges lawyers, case workers etc) adept at applying and interpreting legal procedures that often seem to have little to do the with the lived experience of offender or victim. Such a process, more often than not, does not address the deepest needs of either. The offender goes into a carceral situation likely to deepen his criminality and the victim goes home with the pain and resentment of not having been heard or cared about, and society is diminished by both of these experiences.

In the words of Nathalie Des Rosiers, president of the Law Commission of Canada:

Victims wants to be heard- not through a Crown attorney but for themselves, a community wants to hear acknowledgement for the crime from the mouth of the offender rather than from a slick and clever representation of a lawyer...Too often, social issues are silenced in the courtroom, the reasons why there is drinking or vandalism, the racism, the lack of funding for children`s programs, or the absences of real choices for poor people are not enough fully acknowledged.
(Restorative Justice: Its Promise, Its Challenges, and Its Place in a Democratic Society- a paper given for RJ Week 2001. Ottawa, Canada)

If you are in any doubt about the link between poverty, marginalization and crime consider that in Saskatchewan Aboriginal people make up 11% of the population but account for close to 74% of the inmate population and 72% of youth in custody. Alarming and shameful facts!

Nathalie DesRosier of the Law Commission focuses the issues in a larger frame when she speaks of the three principles of the democratic ideal emmanating from the French Revolution: liberté, égalité, et fraternité. She points out that liberty, in relation to the institutions of justice, is about curtailing the powers of governments. The traditional criminal law system does that by presumption of innocence, limits on search and seizure powers, imposing on law enforcement agencies the necessity of warning prior to infringing on suspects privacy.

Equality has come into its own in the past few decades with new voices being heard- of women, victims, aboriginal communities, handicapped persons, and so sorth. The sexism and racism of the system are being challenged.

She claims that RJ is mostly about the third neglected element- fraternity. It is a process directed at healing and not solely punishing, at future coesistence instead of isolation and disengagement. Fraternity is about respect for consensus building, power sharing, for greater listening and acknowledging of personal hurt and need.

In my brief time I cannot possibly give you more details of the vision of RJ but from what I have said I hope that you understand its main thrust: RJ is about creating models and processes that bring together offender, victims, and communities, so that they can deal with one another as human beings in order to rebuilt, where possible, what has been destroyed. It does not advocate the removal of the present system but rather recognizes its failure to bring healing where crime has devastated lives. If RJ models were the norm rather than the exception in Canada we would all be better off and the cost of the justicial-incarceral system would drop dramatically.

If you have been around St John`s for a while you will be aware that we have a whole cadre of people here dedicated to this vision of social and personal transformation. These are the members of our Circles of Support and Accountability. These Circles are formed around high-risk (high risk to re-offend or high risk because of community hostility to them) offenders released into this community upon expiry of their sentence or on parole. The concept is a simple one- a group of 5 or 6 people form a support group around a core member with whom they enter of voluntary covenant of trust in order to assist the core member to rebuild his life in the community. Over the past few years we have had 2 such Circles operating and a third has just been trained and is about to begin.

The training is very important. St John`s initiated a training program for Circle members funded by a grant from Correctional Services Canada that pays for Susan Love as a part time trainer and coordinator. Susan is working to extend the Circles ministry beyond St John`s Church to other church and community groups.

Circles of Support are one model of RJ -others included Offender-Victim Mediation, Community Conferencing, Community Justice Forums, Peacemaking Circles, to name a few of the imaginative and effective models being developed. All of these share one common important ingredient: local communities participating in the lives of offenders and victims to bring about healing.

And this last point brings me to our role as Christians. Both the reading from Ezekiel and from Matthew`s gospel emphasize the role of the believer as a shepherd within society. Indeed, the shepherding responsibility is everyone`s task and especially those who hold power. And God expects this of us because that is precisely what we can expect of God . Ezekiel describes God as making this promise, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down...I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy.

And in Matthew`s text we learn that we will be judged by the measure of the love we offer through service to the poor, the captive, and the outcasts. Both of these texts lie at the very heart of the contemporary theme of restorative justice.

On this reign of Christ Sunday these themes are brought to our attention as we prepare for our work of action and prayer for the future that God intends for all of creation. In the new year may God`s vision become our vision.