The American criminal justice system is built on a punitive ideology — an ideology that in practice doesn’t always deliver its desired results. There is another way. Restorative justice is an alternative to incarceration: it is an approach to justice that aims to repair harm by providing an opportunity for those harmed and those who take responsibility for the harm to communicate about and address their needs following a crime. Erika Sasson is a Brooklyn-based lawyer who is taking this kind of practice into new and challenging territory: by using it for homicide and domestic violence cases. We’ll discuss her work at length — it is work for which she was one of five New Yorkers to be awarded the 2023 David Prize earlier this year.

 

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