Comments on: Good intentions aren’t enough

By: Felming

Felming — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:37:39 +0000

Nice and interesting post.

Thanks

By: Learn how to tap dance

Learn how to tap dance — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:11:14 +0000

Dr. Howard,
I am glad that your sharing some information about Eastern State Penitentiary. Do you think it is possible to post more pictures here? Thanks in Advance!

By: Emerson

Emerson — Sat, 23 May 2009 21:03:27 +0000

Very good article, very usefull!!

By: zehrh

zehrh — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:13:43 +0000

Hi Michael

I appreciate your response and the question you raise is a good one. My impression has been that RJ has often brought people in who wouldn’t have engaged with criminal justice, or at least in advocacy. In my experience, RJ has provided a way to get some people involved (and to think critically) who might not otherwise have been open to it. But that doesn’t mean your point doesn’t have merit. Russ Immarigeon, in his chapter in Critical Issues in Restorative Justice, argues that RJ has partially lost its way by losing its concern about prison displacement.

I have seen a variety of unintended consequences over the years. Some are fairly benign, but it’s possible some will not be in the long run. My hope is that if the field can continue to be grounded in clear values and principles, the unintended consequences may be less serious than has been the case for many previous “reforms.” But there is no guarantee, which is why we have to remain vigilant. And maybe we need to do more work on a restorative advocacy approach along with the service-provider approach.

Howard

By: Michael Bischoff

Michael Bischoff — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:02:48 +0000

As a Quaker, I think part of the reason I feel drawn to work on prison issues is because Quakers contributed to the origins of the problems. I recently read a good book, Gentle Action (www.gentleaction.org), which talked a lot about unintended consequences, and how they relate to chaos and complexity.

Your post, Howard, makes me wonder about the negative unintended consequences of restorative justice so far. What are your thoughts about that, Howard?

One unintended consequence of RJ that I speculate about is this:
During the period of RJ’s growth in the U.S. (in the last 30 years), the U.S. prison population has grown exponentially. While RJ advocates have been setting up “high touch” RJ programs that serve less than 1% of the cases in a jurisdiction, the responses to the remaining 99% of cases in that jurisdiction has generally become much more retributive. If those people who were setting up new, small RJ programs weren’t focused on those direct services, would they have had more energy and time to advocate for policies and systemic changes–and had more of an influence on setting up more restorative system overall?

I don’t know the answer to this speculative question, but it seems worth considering, as the field of RJ moves forward.

By: DCRamm

DCRamm — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:29:28 +0000

It’s interesting that Charles Dickens (no doubt partially because of his own disposition) almost instantly recoiled from the Quakers’ approach when he saw Eastern State Penitentiary in 1842. He devoted almost all of the seventh chapter of his travel book American Notes for General Circulation to his prison visit, writing: “In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind humane and meant for reformation but I am persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution do not know what they are doing. . . . The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it in its effects, to be cruel and wrong. . . . I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body. . . . My firm conviction is that, independent of the mental anguish it occasions — an anguish so acute and tremendous, that all imagination of it must fall far short of the reality — it wears the mind into a morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough contact and busy action of the world. It is my fixed opinion that those who have undergone this punishment, MUST pass into society again morally unhealthy and diseased.”

The full text of American Notes is available via Google Books and Project Gutenberg. That chapter is particularly worth reading.