(HOST) As the high cost of incarceration continues to be hotly debated in budgetary circles, commentator Deborah Luskin is thinking about a study that compares jail time with an alternative to imprisonment that works.
(LUSKIN) As her capstone project for a Masters degree in Mediation and Conflict Studies at the Woodbury Institute, Vermonter Patricia McIntosh compared the stories of two different boys who killed their fathers.
Both young men grew up in small, rural towns. Both were children of divorced parents. Both had abusive fathers. And both had committed felony-level crimes when they were still boys.
In both cases, neighbors knew of the paternal abuse and did not intervene. Nor did local protective services. One boy was sixteen when he killed his father; the other was fourteen. Both used shotguns. Both were charged with murder. This is where their stories diverge.
One boy went through a punitive criminal justice system. He pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 22 years to life in prison.
The other boy participated in a restorative justice process at the request of his extended family. A court-ordered Family Group Conference was convened with the offender, his family, the victim’s family, a social worker, and the police. They worked out what this boy had to do to repair the harm he’d done.
He was sentenced to two years of supervision while living within his extended family. He was required to be home schooled, undergo psychological testing and counseling, have no access to firearms, and abstain from drugs and alcohol.
So, how are these young men doing now?
The boy who was sixteen when he killed his father is adjusting to prison life, which requires him to adopt a tough-guy stance in order to fend off more seasoned and predatory inmates. He now sports a swastika tattoo.
The other boy has completed his education and has a job. Now in his early twenties, he’s a productive and contributing member of his family and larger community. He has not re-offended in any way. The young man who has participated in Restorative Justice is a Maori, from New Zealand. The young man who is in prison is from Vermont.
At $45,000/year, the state of Vermont will invest nearly a million dollars to keep this young man in jail for 22 years. He will be 38 years old when he first becomes eligible for parole, by which time he will have spent half his life behind bars. Adjusting to life on the outside will be difficult at best.
While I think Vermont’s still a long way from providing a restorative process in cases of homicide, we do already have a highly successful restorative justice process for non-violent offenders. The program started in 1995, and for the past fifteen years it has proven to be both effective and economical. By repairing the harm they have done, offenders stay out of jail and become reintegrated into their communities. According to the statistics, those who complete the reparative process rarely re-offend.
At a time when our jails are full and our coffers are empty, increasing our use of restorative justice only makes sense.