Howard Zehr

This short book (less than 100 pages, with back matter) provides a high level overview of restorative justice. Restorative justice, at it's heart, is about respect. More functionally, while noting that no single definition can capture a field with the diversity of restorative justice, Zehr offers a working definition, "Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible.

What this book focuses on is the background and philosophy that goes into that definition. It does not aim to discuss the applications and practices of restorative justice except in so far as they are valuable for illustrating the general idea.

As such, I recommend this book for someone (like myself), who has heard enough about restorative justice to be interested in the idea but does not have much background information or a need for practical advice in the area.… (more)

What does it mean to face a life prison sentence? What have "lifers" learned about life—from having taken a life? Photographer Howard Zehr has interviewed and made portraits of men and women in Pennsylvania prisons who are serving life sentences without possibility of parole. Readers see the prisoners as people, de-mystified. Brief text accompanies each portrait, the voice of each prisoner speaking openly about the crime each has committed, the utter violation of another person each has caused. They speak of loneliness, missing their children growing up, dealing with the vacuum, caught between death and life. A timely book.… (more)

Howard Zehr presents the portraits and the courageous stories of 39 victims of violent crime in Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims. Many of these people were twice-wounded: once at the hands of an assailant; the second time by the courts, where there is no legal provision for a victim's participation. "My hope," says Zehr, "is that this book might hand down a rope to others who have experienced such tragedies and traumas, and that it might allow all who read it to live on the healing edge."… (more)

Still Doing Life is one of those books where the impact on the reader is greater than the pleasure of the reading. I had to read it in short sittings so I wouldn't be overwhelmed but also so I could think about my own ideas and viewpoints.

I have long been an advocate of restorative justice, though the specific practical changes that have to be made have always made me wonder how we make the first steps so that we can then continue. In other words, my knowledge has lagged far behind my approval of the idea. Like so many people, regardless of where they stand on our "justice" system, there is a tendency to forget that we are talking about people, fellow human beings. They are not just numbers, they are not just whatever crime they committed. They may have done something that we consider worse than anything we have done, but what is more important isn't some hierarchy of wrongs but how we deal with the situations after wrongs are done. I don't want my entire life to be judged by the worst act I ever committed. I believe that is true of most of us. We should find ways to treat people who commit crimes in a similar manner. A productive member of society is far preferrable to locking someone away for life. If a solution short of that can be found we owe it not just to them but to our society to find and implement that solution.

This book shows in very clear terms the humanity of many of these lifers, the ways they have changed and the ways they have been prevented from changing. If you care about humanity, whether as a humanist or an "everyone is a child of God" variety, you can't think it is okay to lock these people up without a chance at living and contributing to society. Unless, of course, you are just paying lip service to whatever ethical or moral system you pretend to follow.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (more)