TAP-ping into Restorative Justice: Continuing the Legacy of Harmon Wray

By Tamara A. Losel

Harmon Wray

It was a little more than a year ago, in late July 2007, when Nashville lost a true civic hero who dedicated 40 years of his life in selfless service to prisoners and the transformation of the criminal justice system. Harmon L. Wray (1946–2007) inspired all who came into contact with him – students at Vanderbilt Divinity School where he directed the Faith and Criminal Justice program; inmates at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution whom he considered family; and his broad circle of friends, colleagues, and loved ones in the social justice community. As an organizer, teacher, writer and speaker, Harmon focused his work on capital punishment, the privatization of prisons for profit, the growth of the prison industrial complex, racism in the criminal justice system, and the meaning of restorative justice in America.

Harmon was a co-founder of the ‘Riverbend class’ – a program begun in 2003 that brought Vanderbilt Divinity students together with inmates at Riverbend Maximum Security prison for theological and political discussion. Harmon also co-founded and volunteered in a number of organizations including the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing (TCASK) and the Restorative Justice Coalition of Tennessee.

In the last year and a half of his life, Harmon was also an active participant in TAP’s Doing Justly project. Harmon’s engagement with Doing Justly brought light and focus to the efforts of the steering committee during its formative stages. His passion and determination inspired Doing Justly’s upcoming experiential learning project (scheduled to launch in February 2009): a class involving students, faith workers, social service providers and service recipients throughout Nashville with the goal of increasing action for economic justice. The Doing Justly project and the ongoing coordination of the Riverbend class by TAP board chair Dan Joranko (and others) are two ways in which TAP honors the life and work of Harmon Wray.

And to continue Harmon’s legacy, TAP is dedicating this issue of the newsletter to the principles and practices of Restorative Justice, a field that Harmon knew well, and in fact, helped shape in the region. In this article, TAP will explore some of Harmon’s writings on the subject, drawing a link between the baseline values of restorative justice and the TAP motto, “We’re All in This Together.”

Restorative Justice: A New Way of Thinking about Wrongdoing

Restorative Justice is an alternative framework for thinking about ways to make our criminal justice system less retributive and more rehabilitative or restorative. In the Western legal system, crime is defined as an act against the state (rather than an individual or group), so victims are left out of the justice process with no voice and no opportunity to get questions answered or to heal. ‘Justice’ is then meted out in punishments to the offender. In delivering ‘justice,’ judges, attorneys and policy makers in the legal system pursue questions like: what laws have been broken? Who did it? And what do they deserve? Conversely, proponents of restorative justice ask: who has been hurt? What are their needs? Whose obligations are these? Who else has a stake in the situation? And what is the appropriate process to involve stakeholders in an effort to put things right? (Zehr 38)

Restorative justice is about making things right first and foremost for the victim, but also for whole communities in a holistic way. To make things right, RJ focuses on the needs of the victim, the offender, the families of both parties and the community. This expansion of the circle of stakeholders (from just the government and offender to the victim and community) shows that crime has a wider impact than what is currently being addressed in the legal system. All stakeholders are encouraged to be involved in the process of making things right, according to the principals of restorative justice.

The RJ movement began in America in the 1970s “…by a handful of people dreaming of doing justice differently” (Zehr 61). Architects of the field (many of them from the Mennonite tradition) viewed crime as a tear in the web of relationships, the web of interconnectedness, and they experimented with victim-offender encounters that laid the groundwork for later programs. Yet while our American movement dates back to the 1970s, the real roots of restorative justice come from ancient cultures and traditions that are “as deep as human history and as wide as the world community” (Zehr 61). Such cultures include Native North Americans and the Maori of New Zealand, among others.

To summarize the requisite functions of restorative justice:

1. Victims’ needs must be addressed
2. Offenders or wrongdoers must admit to some level of responsibility for their offense, name and acknowledge the wrongdoing, and understand the consequences of their actions or learn to empathize with victims
3. Those affected by the offense should be involved in the process in a way that makes sense for all

Questions that Restorative Justice Asks

In a 1999 article in New World Outlook (a magazine of the United Methodist Church), Harmon Wray elucidated the differences between restorative and retributive justice by laying out these thought-provoking questions:

• Who is the real victim of a crime? Is it the state, as in our present criminal justice system? Or is it the person whose body, soul or property was violated?
• What is real accountability? Is it “taking your punishment” or taking responsibility for restitution – for making the situation right, insofar as possible?
• Can a people who have been violated and oppressed “forgive and forget”? Or does healing and reconciliation require remembering, truth telling, repenting and forgiving?
• Can we change people by intentionally inflicting pain upon them? Or will they change if they have reason to hope for a better life?
• What socioeconomic conditions help generate crime and violence in our communities and result in many offenders being victims as well? How can we transform our poor communities and erase economic inequality?
• Who has the most at stake in determining what it takes to make things right after a crime has been committed? Should the decision-makers be a group of lawyers or the victim and the victimizer?
• How do we want criminals to change? Do we want them to be determined not to get caught next time (the likeliest result of a punitive approach)? Or do we want them to develop an internal self-discipline to control their behavior?
• Where violations of human rights have been committed by those in power, how can this truth be told and publicly acknowledged?

Goals and Objectives of Restorative Justice

Harmon’s questions helped bring shape to a field with a wide range of applications. Because it can often be difficult to know where to begin in tackling the problems of crime and violence in our society, practitioners have written goals and objectives for RJ programs. Overarching goals are to: put key decisions into the hands of those most affected by crime; make justice more healing and, ideally, more transformative; and reduce the likelihood of future offenses (recidivism). To achieve these goals, victims have to be involved in the process and come out of it satisfied. Offenders have to understand how their actions affected other people, and take responsibility for those actions. The outcomes of the program have to have repaired the harms done and addressed the reasons for the offense. Finally, victim and offender may gain a sense of ‘closure’ and be re-integrated into the community (Zehr 37).

Harmon’s restorative justice approach was comprehensive in its re-design of our justice system. In his critique in the New World Outlook, he addressed the problems of the prison industrial complex (with over 2 million men and women incarcerated in America – some say as many as 3 million), and proposed better ways to foster economic and social development:

To begin with, the present boom in incarceration should be brought to a screeching halt. Policymakers ought to declare a moratorium on prison construction and a diversion of funds into probation and parole programs. They should sharply reduce caseloads and greatly increase the level of supervision and support of those on probation and parole. Other government revenues presently eaten up by prison building and operating budgets should be diverted to public education, drug and alcohol treatment, affordable housing, early intervention with struggling families and at-risk children, and living-wage job development. Adequate funding for such programs would greatly reduce the factors that contribute to crime. Poor and remote counties should refuse to let state and federal governments and private companies persuade them that the prison construction somehow is community economic development. Prisons are damaging to the spirit and gradually destroy community. (Wray, Jul/Aug 1999, New World Outlook, pg. 8)

“We’re All in This Together” – a Restorative Justice Value

TAP’s motto, “We’re All in This Together,” expresses a core value of restorative justice. If restorative justice provides a new way of looking at wrongdoing, then underneath that wrongdoing is an assumption that we are all interconnected. TAP acts on the value of interconnection by working with organizations and groups to develop a common vision and common message for a just, sustainable future in Tennessee. The goal is to facilitate shifts in ‘worldview’ – the culture’s norms or predominant beliefs – from that of rugged individualism to collective action for social change. Restorative justice provides a concrete way to think about pursuing equity and justice within the theory and practice of peacebuilding and conflict transformation. TAP is grateful to Harmon Wray for bringing this revolutionary framework to the organization.

TAP has a fund in Harmon’s name, dedicated to continuing the Vanderbilt – Riverbend classes that he started. 100% of all donations to the fund will be used to buy books for the inmates. Please make a contribution to this worthy program! Checks made out to Tennessee Alliance for Progress (with Harmon Wray Textbook Fund written on the subject line) may be mailed to: P.O. Box 60338, Nashville, TN 37206. Donations may also be made here.

Tamara Ambar Losel is a TAP board member and the Executive Director of the Nashville Conflict Resolution Center.