Crime and safety have been at the center of a lot of our debates during this election cycle, both at the presidential level and here in New York. This week, Grant Reeher talks with Jason Springs, a professor of religion at the University of Notre Dame. He's the author of "Restorative Justice and Lived Religion: Transforming Mass Incarceration in Chicago."

Program Transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. Crime and safety has been at the center of a lot of our political debates, both at the presidential level and also here in New York state. My guest today is part of a movement advocating a different approach to criminal justice, in particular, how to deal with offenders, their victims, and the communities in which those offenses occur. Jason Springs is a professor of religion, ethics, and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, and is the author of a new book titled “Restorative Justice and Lived Religion: Transforming Mass Incarceration in Chicago.” Professor Springs, welcome to the program.

Jason Springs: Thanks for having me on. Pleasure to be with you.

GR: We're glad you could make the time. So let's just start with some basics. Tell us what restorative justice is, briefly.

JS: Right. Well, to define restorative justice, it helps to begin by actually contrasting it with the approach to justice that the US criminal legal system is currently based on, and that is referred to as retributive justice. So a retributive legal system focuses on three questions, namely, what laws have been broken? Who did it? And what is that person to deserve. Retributive justice thinks of justice as payback for wrongdoing that takes the form of punishment so somebody caused harm to somebody and therefore, it's necessary to cause harm to them to balance the scales of justice, and hopefully to deter future wrongdoing. Now, in contrast to a retributive account of justice, restorative justice focuses on holding people accountable, but doing so in ways that aim to repair the harm that was caused through wrongdoing, that aim to address the needs of the harm parties, as well as all the people affected, and ultimately to promote healing and open constructive paths moving forward. So in contrast, restorative justice is what we call victim and survivor-centered in that it asks a fundamentally different set of questions. It asks, who's been harmed, what are their needs and whose obligations are these? And then finally, what are the processes by which those needs can be met and harms repaired?

GR: Interesting. Okay. So, um, where did this, I mean, obviously, uh, We could probably track the ideas behind this very far back in time, maybe, you know, even in the Bible, but, but in terms of a practice, where, where did this originate?

JS: Right. Well, there's a couple of very highly influential, uh, sources that, uh, from which the current kind of social movement in the United States comes. Um, You find it developed in the work of a, uh, well, restorative justice and criminologist and restorative justice specialist by the name of Howard Zare, working as far back as the 1970s, wrote a very influential book. He actually piloted and developed some of the practical programs in Elkhart, Indiana, just one town over from South Bend where I work at Notre Dame. Another of the most influential. sources was put into practice in South Africa in the wake of apartheid and specifically the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which unfolded over several years, used restorative justice as its guiding idea, set of principles and practices to try to move beyond the The deep harms and the violence and the violation of human rights that had been caused by South African apartheid. So if I were to identify two, the two most influential sources for the contemporary restorative justice movement in the United States, those would be the two.

GR: Interesting. And you anticipated one of the questions I wanted to ask you in the way that you defined restorative justice, but just follow up on it, I guess. You know, there, there is this longstanding debate here in the United States and around the world about whether we should be holding criminals individually responsible for their actions and try to deter others through the punishment. That's exactly the way you described the U.S. system or whether to view it through this broader societal lens. And it seems to me, Based on what I'm hearing that restorative justice kind of bridges both of those in a way because it's not, it's not like it's not saying let's not hold people accountable, but it's asking a different set of questions about that.

JS: That's exactly right. Um, accountability is the beating heart of restorative justice. And, but it, it reconceptualizes accountability in, in contrast to retributive justice because it says accountability needs, needs to be something that we actually. Uh, facilitate in meaningful ways and achievable ways by putting it into practice in ways that are constructive and again, promote healing for, for all the people involved. So all the people involved have a voice and a say, uh, in the process of recovery and to the extent possible, the repair of the harm. And what's interesting is that accountability as it occurs in the, the retributive. criminal legal system is in some ways, well, first of all, it's remarkably counterproductive. And in some ways, it's really kind of a sham accountability. Um, the adversarial framework of the criminal legal system, where you have a prosecutor and a defendant and the defendant might as well plead not guilty and force the other side to prove their case. So already from the you've got an orientation, which set which decreases an emphasis on accountability, or if it does, it facilitates some sometimes a kind of false accountability by incentivizing please please false please in many cases through plea bargaining. And then what you have is, you know, the result is punishment and punishment. We found is remarkably counterproductive. It actually causes more harm and raises rates of repeat offending among people who are in. swept into the system, uh, and come out often more harmed, more traumatized, and more likely to, well, engage in further wrongdoing on the far side of that.

GR: And on top of that, I guess, I would think You know, the victim hasn't gotten anything other than seeing the perpetrator going to jail. They haven't gotten, you know, if it's their property, they haven't gotten their property back necessarily or whatever it is, there hasn't been any real attempt to help them. And it sounds like this looks at that.

JS: Exactly. Uh, one of the things that restorative justice, one of the ways is described as victim and or survivor-centered in that it begins with the needs and the harms experienced by the victims and seeks, First and foremost to promote the repair and meeting of those needs in particular, but in the process it recognizes and conceptualizes these harms as relational in nature, even, even if like a victim and a wrongdoer never knew each other prior to this, they know each other now through the wrongdoing, but it can, but, and of course, restorative justice has a broader vision in which People living in a society together are in relationship with one another in some broader sense, though it may not be immediately relational. So it begins with the victim, the focus is on the experience of the victim and the needs of the victim, but it also focuses on the needs and the experience of the wrongdoer and the community more broadly. It conceptualizes the community as a participant in this, because all of these have to be drawn into the process in order for the] repair and the accountability to be meaningful and to move forward in a productive and a constructive direction.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reheer and I'm speaking with Jason Springs. He's a Notre Dame religion professor and the author of a new book titled “Restorative Justice and Lived Religion, Transforming Mass Incarceration in Chicago.” So, uh, I want to get into in a, in a little bit here of the, the details of how this works and the things that you examined in depth in Chicago. But let me ask this question first. Has restorative justice so far tended to be more successful for certain kinds of crimes versus others? Maybe that's violent versus property crime or some other, some other way you can distinguish it.

JS: Yeah. Well, I mean, what they've discovered is those who've studied this in a more formal way, Uh, is that it's actually been productive across all degrees of, of, of crime and, and degrees of harm. Um, how you, uh, the ways that it is, is helpful and productive, differ, you know, for. There are people who work with restorative justice in the case is a violent crime and find that it is actually remarkably transformative and has an impact even in those cases. Um, the legal system itself recognizes that in lower-level nonviolent forms of crime, restorative justice is a much better way and the, the, the, Simply putting people into jail and cycling them into the system itself. So this is often referred to as a diversionary approach to restorative justice. It diverts people who have been brought into the system for nonviolent low-level offenses, maybe Property crime or maybe sometimes a crime related to drug use or abuse or something like this, and it diverts them out of the system and this even system actors recognize is a much-needed path to it to a criminal legal system that has run amok and grown into exploded into really mass incarceration. There are cases as well where restorative justice practices have been implemented. In prisons and in jails among high-level offenders and have had a remarkable success rate in, um, you know, humanizing the conditions in which the people are incarcerated and being punished and which promotes repair of harm for the victims. And the survivors. So people just don't see the person who caused the harm to their loved one or to themselves just thrown in jail and caged up for an indefinite amount of time and then been told by the prosecutor, the actors in the system, Hey, you've got your we put the person in prison. We're punishing them as hard as we can. That will give you satisfaction. And actually, it's been studied and shown that that's remarkably likely. unsatisfactory to victims. It leaves victims wondering numerous things, seeking truth with questions that never get answered and experiencing harms and trauma of their own. So even at the high levels where restorative justice for severe and violent Crimes may be paired with certain aspects of incarceration or separating a person from society. Even there in those cases, and in cases of violent crime, it's been shown to ha be remark remarkably more effective, I should say, than the system as we currently have it.

GR: That's interesting, and I'll just share with you and with our listeners too that, uh, here in Onondaga County, where, uh, the program is centered, uh, in part, we have a number of alternative courts that speak to exactly what you're talking about, and for, for different kinds of offenses, and so that it, it seems to be something that is catching on. Well, let's, let's talk about that. Thank you. What you actually immersed yourself in, which is the research method you used, it's sort of participant observation or participant, you know, participant researcher, and you dedicate your book actually to the folks that you, you hung out with the precious blood ministry of reconciliation. Tell us about the work that organization's done.

JS: Yeah, happy to. So the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation is located on the south side of Chicago. It's in a neighborhood there called Back of the Yards. And, uh, Back of the Yards is a neighborhood that has, for historical reasons that I recount in the book, as well as contemporary reasons, uh, terms of high poverty rates, low access to resources, poor school, school resources and things like this. These are, this is a neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods are very much enmeshed in various forms of violence. Uh, it's gang violence, um, as well as, uh, Policing, over-policing, and there are numerous instances of police abuse of force and targeting, targeted policing that I document in the book in this neighborhood. And starting in about 2002, there was a group of brothers and sisters of the Precious Blood Order, it's a Roman Catholic order, who went to this neighborhood and kind of started a community center. They got to know some of the people in the neighborhood, and they, uh, Within the following few years, as a part of establishing this community center, they began to practice restorative justice. The order itself is oriented towards addressing forms of conflict, destructive conflict, and violent conflict. You know, they see themselves coming out of a certain aspect of the Christian religious tradition and understand themselves to be motivated by kind of their understanding of Well, the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament is what it boils down to, and Jesus's command to love your neighbor. And so they see that as, as focusing specifically on responding in constructive and healing ways where there has been destructive conflict. So in this neighborhood, and over the last 20 years now, uh, they have Founded this community center and in a way that really made the local neighborhood people a part of the everyday operations of that center and did so in a way where they would implement restorative justice practices to address much of the harm, the destructive conflict and the violence that the people in the neighborhood were experiencing. So I went in there to the neighborhood. I got to know the folks working at the center. I got to know that, through that, many of the folks living in the neighborhood and saw over the course of about five or six years of field research exactly what they were doing and coming to an understanding and then describing for the purposes of the book what, what they were doing and what I was seeing to be a kind of transformational impact upon the neighborhood and the surrounding community that this initiative had.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reheer, and I'm talking with Jason Springs. He's a professor of religion, ethics and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, and he's the author of a new book titled “Restorative Justice and Lived Religion: Transforming Mass Incarceration in Chicago,” and we've been discussing his book. So before the break. Jason, you were telling the story of how this works in Chicago with the Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation. Give us a sense, though, of on the ground, how this might work. Maybe there's one example you could use, but I'm, I'm sure that, that, that we're all interested in hearing how, you know, how does, what actually happens to the offender? What, what actually happens to the victim in this?

JS: Right. Well, I certainly appreciate the question and the chance to get into the details. I'll speak in specifically about one of the most widely forms that the practice of restorative justice take takes in this center and in the surrounding centers throughout Chicago. And it's called. the peacemaking circle practice. And this is this, this practice of restorative justice is traced back to, um, Indigenous communities in North America as a practice of justice that, that much to the spirit of restorative justice aims to kind of heal and repair harm rather than just to punish. And so the Precious Blood Center and similar restorative justice initiatives in community will use peacemaking circles where they actually sit in circle together over a period of time. They have what's called a talking piece and they pass it in a particular direction and only the person who has the talking piece can speak at any time and through several rounds of passing the talking piece that is led by a circle keeper. So the circle can be designed for a particular purpose. It can be, it's not necessarily over a destructive conflict. Circles can be held for any number of reasons to celebrate an accomplishment, to welcome someone to the community. Um, but in this context, very frequently they're used to repair and respond to destructive harm and conflict. Um, and then Through process of sharing and building this community in the circle so that people understand who we are and where each other is coming from their story, their background, they then can address the instances of harm and conflict and come through consensus to a response, a response that is focused on accountability that speaks to the needs and the harms of the person who was harmed, but also works constructively for the person who caused the harm. So this is kind of the particular practice, and these were not just used at the Precious Blood, peacemaking circles pretty ubiquitous in a number of restorative justice initiatives and centers that have emerged across Chicago, and which work integratively, in effect creating a kind of Network or web of restorative justice initiatives that work together and provide a meaningful alternative to the standard punitive approach to harm and justice in Chicago.

GR: So if I'm an offender, I am part of the circle or I, how do, how do I fit into it?

JS: Yes, you're part of the as the offender would be a part of the circle the person who's harmed if they so choose in some cases they may they may not but if that's the case usually you would have kind of what they call a surrogate person who's who has experienced the that kind of harm, uh, at some point to participate in the circle, but you'd have members of the community to often have family members or mentors or someone who's meaningful to each of the primary participants in the con, in the, in the situation of harm to participate in the circle process. And over the course of several hours. In some cases, they recur over multiple days, depending on the nature and severity of the conflict. But, uh, yeah, all the participants, nobody's required to participate, but, um, it is voluntary. But, uh, you know, it's practiced in a way where this has become kind of the norm in these community centers and in these communities. And it's really begun to get the attention of justices in the juvenile justice system there in Cook County, and even, you know, police as well.

GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. And my guest is Notre Dame religion professor, Jason Springs. So, obviously, there's going to be pushed back against this approach. And, uh, one, let me, let me give you one example of that I can think of that occurs to me. And this has to do with homicides in Chicago. So you're not necessarily. I'm proposing this for that, but, but there was an in-depth study that was done of every gun homicide in Chicago a few years back by the Washington Post. And what the, what the study found was that the vast majority, and this is when the, the, the homicides spiked in Chicago. What they found was the vast majority of these were committed by criminals who already had extensive records, including records of violence with guns. And one of the conclusions of that, at least the suggestion is that. There are then some kinds of people, mostly in gangs, who it seems pretty clear should be taken out of society before this can happen. Now, maybe a restorative justice approach would have prevented that person from going down that path, and I can see that being the argument for it. But would restorative justice also acknowledge that, you know, there are some cases where you just need to take the person out of society?

JS: Yeah, there are different views on this. Um, the view that I encountered there in, um, in among the restorative justice initiatives across Chicago and certainly the Precious Blood Ministry Reconciliation was that, yes, in some cases there are, there are people who need to be separated for some period of time. Um, because of, you know, the nature and character of what they've done. Um, those are still provide opportunities to apply restorative justice in those separated situations and restorative justice processes can be implemented and are implemented in in car sites of incarceration as a way of. Building relationships that enable people who have done significant and even major harm to others to come to an understanding of what they've done to come to an under deeper understanding of why they did what they did, and maybe the harms that they experienced out of which. Uh, that harm caught. They caused the harm they did. You know, one of the sayings that I encountered pretty, pretty, uh, widely there and across Chicago was, hurt people, hurt people. Uh, that often the people who cause harm and engage in wrong have themselves suffered various forms of harm. And restorative justice is provides, even in context where people have to be separated out for some period of time, processes of understanding and healing and repair and coming to terms often with, with the great degree of trauma that those people also carry. So even in those contexts, it's implemented and, uh, has been done so to a significant success.

GR: Well, we got about three minutes left. I want to make sure we get this last topic in because your book has as part of its title, lived religion, very, very thought-provoking phrase. You're a professor of religion after all. So, um, uh, how, how is this practice part of or tied to this broader thing that you call lived religion? Tell us what you mean by that and how it might change the way we approach this issue.

JS: Right. Well, the lived religion I use as a category that, uh, front approaches to the shared practices of restorative justice. In some cases, people participate in restorative justice, as you mentioned earlier in our conversation, because they have particular religious beliefs or come from a particular religious tradition, which focuses or emphasizes the values that are at the heart of restorative justice. But in many times, people come to restorative justice and say, Hey, I'm not religious in background, but I recognize that there's something important going on here, and I can participate in these practices as well. So for me, the concept of lived religion, I use it to describe a kind of what I just, what I call a spiritual dimension or dynamic. Many people who are say, I'm not religious, but I, Participate in this and I see the value and there's something very significant going on here. We'll say, I will describe it as in kind of spiritual terms. And as I encountered these descriptions, I found that really the the form of an approach to restorative justice implemented in these communities was really What had a kind of greater quality, a holistic quality, understood restorative justice as an approach to community and being in community together and this deeper sense of relationship and didn't practice restorative justice and this may be the key point as like a tool in a toolbox for mediating conflict. It can do that, but this larger sense that emphasized relationship building and building community both in response to harm, but also as a way of preempting and proactively addressing the causes of harm really was what I'm getting at when I talk about this spiritual relational aspect that I described with the term lived religion.

GR: I can see how it would be a very powerful experience, uh, particularly if everybody was authentically. Sharing what they were thinking and feeling. Well, really, just a minute left. Let me squeeze one last question. This sounds Very promising, but it also sounds very labor-intensive. How do you see this being scaled up to the entire criminal justice system?

JS: You know, that's a great question. I did mention one of the things that I just discovered in my research, uh, I launched into my research in Chicago back in 2015, I had no idea what I would discover. However, what I discovered is that those. It wasn't just being implemented in local grassroots community-based ways, but as I described that these initiatives had already begun scaling up by, in a way that both preserved their individual autonomy, autonomy as initiatives, but also integrated their efforts and resources across the city and even invited and elicited participation from juvenile justices in particular, Look, what we're doing is not sustainable. We need to work with these community-based efforts and this web, a network that has emerged across the city. So in the book, I hold this up as an example that could be implemented in other cities and maybe scaled up across the country eventually.

GR: Well, it sounds very promising, and we'll have to see. Uh, that was Notre Dame professor Jason Springs. And again, his new book is titled “Restorative Justice and Lived Religion: Transforming Mass Incarceration in Chicago.” Pick it up and take a read. It may actually change the way you think about criminal justice. Professor Springs, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me.

JS: Thank you for having me on today. It's been a pleasure.

GR: Me too. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, Conversations in the Public Interest.