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GO UNITIVE, not punitive!
A recent Pew Report announced that one in every 100 adults in the U.S. is locked up. For African Americans adults, the number is one in every 15, unless you are a black adult male under 34—then it is one in 9. With 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has 25% of the world’s prisoners. This is unacceptable! The cost of one year in prison is a teacher’s salary—lost. If the inmate has a mental illness or is elderly, the cost is two, sometimes even three, teacher’s salaries a year.
This incarceration binge was born of a “get tough on crime” political agenda that has now lasted decades - thirty second sound bites, like “abolish parole,” “three strikes, you’re out,” “truth in sentencing,” and “zero tolerance,” designed to play on our fear of crime, not to heal our communities. To reverse the tide, we must reverse the political agenda. We need an approach to crime that not only punishes, one that also teaches constructive behavior - both before a crime is ever committed, and after - for cases when the stumbling stones were not removed in time. This is what a unitive justice approach can achieve.
People won't give up the "get tough" approach to crime until they are sure there is something better to replace it. There is! Here are some examples:
Problem Solving Courts. The problem-solving approach integrates treatment and social services with judicial case processing and monitoring. This is especially beneficial in managing cases when there is recurring contact with the justice system due to underlying medical and social problems.
For the offender, an arrest is a moment of crisis. For the court, this crisis is a window of opportunity, a chance to encourage the offender to address the problems that may be associated with criminal behavior. Applications for this model include drug treatment courts, mental health courts, family violence courts, driving under the influence courts, and numerous others.
For more information, please visit the website for the National Center for State Courts where a Problem-Solving Justice Toolkit developed by the NCSC is available.
Restorative Justice Programs. Restorative Justice (RJ) begins with the understanding that crime harms victims, offenders, their families, and communities in real and often lasting ways. It responds to crime and wrongdoing by involving victims, offenders, communities, and justice professionals and requiring offenders to be held accountable. RJ is tough on crime by holding offenders accountable to right the wrongs they have inflicted on their victims and the community.
A Restorative Justice process aims to:
· Focus on the harms of wrongdoing and the consequences to the victims.
· Assist victims and address their needs in the justice process.
· Show equal respect for victims, offenders and communities, involving all in the process of justice.
· Provide opportunities for dialogue between victims and offenders and those affected by crime.
Research has also shown that RJ programs have reduced the fear among victims and decreased the frequency and severity of further criminal behavior among offenders. (Family Group Conferencing; Implications for Crime Victims, U.S. Dept. of Justice Office of Justice Programs, Mark S. Umbreit, Ph.D., 2000)
Community Model Programs for Jails, Prisons and Reentry. This model is based on the “social model,” but has been specifically adapted by two experts on programming in correctional institutions, Morgan Moss and Penny Patton. While it addresses the underlying life issues that gave rise to the anti-social conduct, it does much more.
Traditional correctional facility treatment programs may achieve compliance (first order change), but fail to produce second order, or lasting change, in the lives of inmates. By teaching the inmates to create a pro-social, self-governing unit within the institution, they are empowered to offer mutual aid to one another, and the anti-social culture that pervades so many correctional institutions is transformed into a positive, adaptive community.
Specific activities are scheduled for twelve hours a day that facilitate the inmates taking a hard look at themselves and experientially, they learn new tools for changing past conduct and changing themselves internally. The sense of ownership, empowerment and equality this process supports leads to higher levels of motivation, compliance, positive attitude and hard work as the community builds. Its norms eventually exceed those that society at large accepts. The cost of this model is approximately one-third the cost of traditional treatment, and the recidivism rate that results is much lower.
Community Model programs are presently operating in the Southside Regional Jail in Emporia, VA and Knox County Jail in Vincennes, IN.
Restorative Program in Schools. A means of preventing crime is to teach our children to deal with conflict and breakdown in relationships in a unitive way, not with violence. This lesson then extends beyond school, to the community at large, and into adulthood. This begins by giving them tools, like peer mediation and dispute resolution, using the same principles of honesty, integrity, trust and community building described above.
These four unitive models are examples of how we can involve different parts of the system in reducing crime more effectively, keeping us safe in ways that do not cause further harm, and saving lots of money—all far better than the present punitive approach. These unitive models are already in place on a small scale. All we need is the political will to make them the norm, not the exception.
The Unitive Movement involves all segments of our community - churches, civic organizations, law makers, political activists, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, students, people of all races and ethnicity - to change the status quo.
Please join the effort to make this happen, first by making Virginia the prototype. We are setting in motion an initial unitive justice legislative agenda to be considered by the 2009 Virginia General Assembly session, and a plan in place to work for the passage of this legislation. The ultimate goal is, over the next few years, to make Virginia a model for the nation in how to transition from punitive to unitive justice.
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