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Restorative justice and prison visitation

Sandra Koop Harder

They make you think a lot, Jesus’ words about the marginalized. He didn’t tie salvation down to a formula, a creed or a set of “spiritual laws”. Rather, He connected our freedom to service to others. That list in Matthew 25 is representative only. No one is excluded – as the legal beagle in Luke 10 learned when he asked, “And who is my neighbour?” He wanted to “justify himself”, the text says. Quite plainly, our neighbour is everyone, and we are, each one of us, a sheep or a goat, depending on how we respond to our neighbour. Our embrace of the other is the only thing that shows we have been justified – something we need not and cannot do for ourselves anyway.

Included in that list is the prisoner. Let’s face it: The criminal is an enemy, sometimes Public Enemy Number One – and often rightly so. A crime has been committed, and a victim or victims are left in its wake. They deserve justice, and so does the perpetrator. The traumatized community also needs healing.

Enter “restorative justice”, or, better, according to Quaker activist Ruth Morris, “transformative justice”. Ruth was the year 2000 winner of the Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award. On July 30, 2001 she was also awarded The Order of Canada. Ron Wiebe was a tireless advocate from within the system (the Correctional Service of Canada) for restorative justice to pervade Canadian criminal justice. He was also a Mennonite Brethren Christian. He died of cancer three years ago, and the award was established in his honour. Ruth has also been battling cancer, as she has fought outside the system much of her life to bring transformative justice into Canadian criminal justice.

God’s will for criminal justice is summed up in the “Suffering Servant song”: “Here is My servant, whom I uphold, My chosen one in whom I delight; I will put My Spirit on Him and He will bring justice to the nations. A bruised reed He will not break, and a smouldering wick He will not snuff out. In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; He will not falter or be discouraged till He establishes justice on earth” (Isaiah 42:1-4).

God’s intent for the Suffering Servant, whom Christians understand is Jesus, is that through Him and His church, the healing powers of restorative/transformative justice might change every culture definitively and forever. The prophet Amos pleaded: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24). This is the same healing stream mentioned in Revelation: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life. . . . And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2).

One eddy of this stream has been church-based, one-to-one prison visitation programs, active in several Canadian provinces since 1966. The mandate is simple: to provide friendship resources for persons inside prison, and reintegration assistance outside the walls. Through these means, it is hoped that conditions may be created for the transformation of prisoners’ relationships to others – including the victim(s), the community and God.

Sonya (not her real name) knew deep alienation in her marriage, and increasingly generally in life. One day, she acted out her overwhelming frustrations, and her husband lay dead. Still in prison years later, she has been on a longstanding healing journey. In it all, a volunteer has refused to let Sonya be a “project”, but rather has always treated her as a friend. Friends never give up, even when rebuffed. Jerry (again, not his real name) meticulously planned his sexual assaults. There were several rape victims before the police caught him, and a completely traumatized community. He, too, is still in prison several years later, but his transformation has been profound. First, a faithful volunteer cheered him on through very hard work on himself. Then, after months of case development, he participated in a professionally arranged meeting in “therapeutic dialogue” with two of his rape victims. He found his own humanity rekindled in their reaching out to him. They in turn discovered, as one put it to national media subsequently, “a new birth”. The victim and the wider community were thereby significantly impacted with hope. By his early teens, Glenn (his real name) was into a life of crime. During a Brinks armoured truck robbery, a man was shot and killed. Glenn was sentenced for murder. A faithful volunteer couple visited and nurtured Glenn in a newfound Christian faith for several years. Today, Glenn serves the community as an ex-prisoner through a ministry to other prisoners and ex-prisoners. He has won outstanding community service awards, regularly made presentations on his life in a great range of community forums, and tirelessly seeks to “make amends” to the victim’s family through his community service. He acknowledges that he can never bring back a life, but he can, at least, foster a bit of healing in response to his own ongoing personal transformation in Christ.

Restorative/transformative justice defies any kind of easy definition or programmatic expression. Like the kingdom of heaven, it is an enthralling vision that eludes all attempts to capture its essence in words, programs or systems. We in prison ministry acknowledge that we are caught up in something far vaster than our little agencies and lives. As Paul put it: “God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:19-20).

Wayne Northey is executive director of M2/W2 Association, based in Abbotsford, B.C.

About M2/W2 Association Dick Simmons, founding father of the M2/W2 Association, began to develop a deep concern for needy people during his years as a Presbyterian clergyman in downtown New York City. His concerns became a vision in the early 1960s after he and his family had settled in Seattle and he had spent some time visiting a prisoner in the State Reformatory in Monroe, Wash. The friendless, hopeless state of the prisoners in that prison led him to conclude: “We’ve got to get to the prisoner before he’s released and help him build some positive attitudes. I’m convinced that this can only be done on a man-to-man basis, with a free man going to visit the imprisoned man for one reason only – because he cares. I’d like to call the program M2 – Man-to-Man.” By 1965, Job Therapy Inc. (M2) was incorporated in the State of Washington. By the winter of 1966, an ad hoc committee of people interested in starting a similar program in British Columbia had been formed. By March 21, 1966, 16 volunteers had started relating to prisoners at Haney Correctional Centre. Canadian Job Therapy (M2) was incorporated in 1970. The women’s program (W2) was added in 1974. The name of the association was changed to M2/W2 Association – Christian Volunteers in Corrections in 1979. Current program: M2/W2 has about a dozen staff and 400 volunteers, who relate to about 800 prisoners in 23 institutions in British Columbia. At any given time, there are about 200 prisoners waiting for volunteers to be matched with. M2/W2 has an annual budget of about $600,000, with slightly more than half coming from government contracts and the rest coming from donations. Contact information M2/W2 Association, 208-2825 Clearbrook Road, Abbotsford, B.C. V2T 6S3 Phone: 604-859-3215 Fax: 604-859-1216 E-mail: info@m2w2.com Programs similar to M2/W2 Association operate in other provinces. For instance, Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba operates a program called Open Circle.

 

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Last modified April 17, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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