Never again. I'm reading an article for Sentencing with The Dick and Smithy about 'restorative justice,' and my eyes are starting to bleed from the stench of ganja wafting off the pages. The author describes restorative justice as "healing rather than hurting, moral learning, community participation and community caring, respectful dialogue, forgiveness, responsibility, apology, and making amends." Weird. I thought "restorative justice" referred to when criminals injure innocent people, and we "restore" that feeling of pain and victimization back to the offender through a series of vicious headbutts.
(And don't go thinking I'm some electric chair pimping reactionary jackass who just wants to lock people up. I recognize the difference between someone who commits a crime and a criminal, the type of offender who has suffered through hard circumstances and made poor choices, and the type that victimizes people without remorse. When I say "dangerous people," I mean actually dangerous people.)
I've gotta say, this class is majorly disappointing. I knew from the get-go there would be problems with the hippies in this class (including the soccer mom/social worker/huge pain in the ass lady, the "No person of color has ever done anything wrong, and police should not be able to stop a person of color unless that person subjectively wanted to be stopped" guy, and a chorus of "Punishing criminals is wrong" bleeding-heart nutjobs), but the reading material has been surprisingly bad. Dense psychology, naive philosophy, and now this schlock. Remington Almighty.
Apparently I'm going to have to make sure I'm at class from now on. I remember when Mr. Utah got laughed at in Prosser's Hippie Love Fest/Crim Pro class for recommending a sentence of 5 years in prison for a drug dealer who shot at a car because the passengers stole his drugs and took off without paying. Well, time to return the favor. From now on, they want to start talking about flower power and making amends to justify letting a dangerous person go free, they can expect to get laughed out of the room. Time to restore some real justice to the classroom.
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3 comments:
You know, that sociology student was the one who insisted on this reading. In his world, child molesters can be cured with a mutual apology and reentry into society. Well please forgive my right wing redneck ass for not wanting to welcome sex offenders back with a hug and a smile.
The instant that douchebag speaks out in favor of this method I plan on kicking him on the nuts, lighting his house on fire, blowing up his environmentally friendly foreign car, stealing his grandmother's social security check, brewing some meth on his face, and feeding his Phish records to a goat. After that, an hour in the healing circle should fix me right up and repay my debt to society.
God, this kind of shit is ridiculous. I remember the first time I heard about "restorative justice." "What's that?" I asked. "Oh, it's when, instead of punishing someone and further destroying the relationships involved, we restore those relationships through victim/offender conferences and whatnot."
Although I didn't say it, I thought "that's the most straight-up mind-numbingly stupid thing I've ever heard in my entire life." So, if some monster molested some innocent child, your theory of the universe allows for the possiblity that that child would then want to see their molester and want to forgive him and then want to have a relationship with him?
The idea barely passes the laugh test--how the hell does it get serious academic attention?
Sometimes I wish I could be in the ridiculous situations you guys find yourselves in.
Mr Utah, your solution was both hilarious and appropriate for the purposes of restorative justice. Good show.
And yeah, it was pretty damn sickening to read. At least in class Smith pointed out that these restorative conferences were pretty much only in addition to sentences, not a substitute for sentences. So for that, sure, maybe they can be a helpful part of sentences. That's what I got out of the discussion anyway, while I was awake. Which was an admittedly not large portion of the time.
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