In Conversation: Strong Towns and Restorative Justice (Part Two)
Inga N. Laurent, J.D. Photo via the Gonzaga University, School of Law
This is the second part of our conversation with Inga Laurent. Laurent is an internationally-recognized expert in restorative justice. She is also an Associate Professor at Gonzaga University, School of Law; the Director of that school’s Externship Program; and a Fulbright scholar. For more background on Laurent and how our paths crossed in Spokane, Washington, make sure to read Part One.
In Part One, Laurent and I discussed how, just as in city planning, the perceived need for “efficiency” in the criminal justice system is often at odds with some of the deeper needs of the community. We talked about how human societies evolved ways of handling conflict, how we can reclaim some of that hard-won wisdom, and about the fascinating intersection of restorative justice and building stronger towns.
Today, we look at the importance of measuring the right things, the definition of true efficiency (hint: it doesn’t mean faster or easier), and at how one-size-fits-all retributive justice resembles conventional approaches to auto-oriented development.
PATTISON
Is one of the critiques of restorative justice that it is inefficient, that it takes longer?
LAURENT
It often does take longer! Yes, that’s absolutely one of the critiques. I pick on the word “efficiency” all the time with my students. What does efficiency mean? If we're talking about efficiency as meaning “faster,” then, yeah, restorative justice is a failure in that regard. It is certainly not a faster mode of doing justice. You have to meet with all the parties. You may have to meet with them multiple times.
Spokane event co-organizer Spencer Gardner introduces Chuck Marohn.
I had this amazing interview in Jamaica with somebody who does restorative and mediation work. He was telling me about a case he took that was referred from the courts. The courts had been working on this problem for a really long time with this family. It was a conflict that seemed to be between two people but which actually ran much deeper. He had a bunch of meetings with 19 different family members, and it ended up really impacting the way that family worked together going forward. The current version of our criminal justice system is not designed to be able to do that, nor does it seek to do that, nor is it interested in doing that, nor does it even seen as a value.
And yet, I would argue, if we're talking about true efficiency, that the restorative justice model is much more efficient, even though it takes time and resources. In terms of the potential relational repair and the potential generational shift, it's the only way possible.
The argument about efficiency is similar to what we see in Strong Towns. We have to ask ourselves if we valuing the right things and whether we have the right metrics. Like in Chuck’s maps, where we see it is the poorest neighborhoods that are producing the most value. They’re the most efficient. They are the productive. They are the neighborhoods saving the city the most money.
PATTISON
The poor are subsidizing the rich!
LAURENT
Exactly!
We tend to be really bad about getting to the root causes of things and figuring out what the values are, what the metrics are, and asking the right questions.
If we use the same metrics for restorative justice that we use for the criminal justice system, it's always going to look wrong. Right? It will look inefficient. There are surprisingly happy results around recidivism rates. That is one of the traditional metrics we might be able to use. But that metric alone doesn’t fully capture the core values of restorative justice, which are relational improvements, victim satisfaction, the offender changing their ways. If we use those as metrics, then we're going to see efficiency in a whole new light.
But if we're looking at other questions — “Did we get them through the system fast?” “Did we get them into jail and into punishment?” — then our metrics are never going to match up. It's never going to look efficient. On that scale, it's never going to look like a success.
If you use the metrics for what restorative justice is actually designed to do, I think you're going see success in a whole different light, in a much more holistic way. It’s all about how we define efficiency.
PATTISON
That’s a great point. As a writer, I love word etymologies. And the words “efficient” and “effect” come from a Latin word that means "to accomplish thoroughly.” We typically associate efficiency with the path of least resistance: less time, less friction. But if we think of efficiency as meaning that something worth doing is worth doing thoroughly, yes restorative justice may take longer on the front end but it takes less time overall and it is done all the way.
LAURENT
It's a more thorough result. Right!
There’s an analogy here with city planning and city infrastructure — building something cheaply and quickly, versus building something that requires more time and effort and energy but takes different opinions into account and ends up sounder and stronger.
The same can be said of politics, the “left” and the “right.” When we have really put something through its paces and argued about it and fought over it, and come to some kind of terms with the diversity of opinions at issue, we often produce a better product in the end. Because it was tested and forged against everybody's ideals.
The Spokane event was held in the moot courtroom of Gonzaga University, School of Law.
PATTISON
There’s a story I like to tell about Quakers. Quakers make decisions by consensus — or what’s sometimes called “beyond consensus” — and so we have a reputation for taking a long time to make decisions. There was this Quaker congregation I know that had a really difficult decision to make. It was very controversial. And it took them twelve years to make the decision. But what I heard was that everyone stayed in relationship during this volatile time.
One day I was making fun of us Quakers to a woman who has been Quaker a lot longer than me, teasing us for being so slow and for taking twelve years to make a decision. And this woman said, “John, the difference is that other congregations would have a few people make the decision and then there would be twelve years of repercussions. The Quaker process deals with the repercussions on the front end and keeps people in relationship.”
I started to think about this process as an engine. In an internal combustion engine, you have these carefully controlled explosions on the front end that move you forward. That’s the Quaker process. The alternative — a few people making everyone’s decisions for them in a smoke-filled backroom — is the uncontrolled explosion. People get hurt and it’s a lot more difficult to move forward. In the end, which way was more efficient?
LAURENT
Yes, and you preserve relationships. And not only do you preserve relationships, but you build your own skills and resiliency, your own way of arguing. Because you're dialogic, right? You're engaging in conversation. You're understanding somebody else's way of being in the world and why something is important to them. That, to me, is the whole point of humanity.
Why are we here if not for that? To understand each other's perspectives and views and to find validity and autonomy in everybody's rights. To get to some place that works for all of us. I think those are very much in alignment with restorative justice. It’s giving the victim the autonomy to determine what justice is for them. It’s letting the offender's story be told so we don’t have just a flat view of “somebody who did something wrong,” but we come to understand that this person has, most likely, suffered trauma too. In the past, their needs weren't met, but if we can meet their needs, they might be brought back into the fold and become productive members of our society. If their needs are met, if they understand what happened and why it happened, and if the needs and resources of the community can be redeployed in the right way, we have a better chance of sticking together and struggling together.
I love that story about the Quakers. People seem so disposable in our day and age, and yet that congregation put twelve years into making a decision and nobody left the room. To me, relationships are of primary importance and so, to me, that story is really beautiful.
PATTISON
Here at Strong Towns, when we talk about city planning, city design, and development, we talk about the long-term costs of a conventional suburban-style development. There are hidden costs. The bill is ultimately going to come due. While acknowledging that, as you said earlier, restorative justice should complement conventional retributive justice rather than replace it outright, are there hidden long-term costs to the one-size-fits-all approach of retributive justice that seems to dominate now?
LAURENT
Yeah! Recidivism rates are huge because we're not getting at the root causes of our problems.
Not only that, when we institutionalize somebody, think about the dehumanizing, inhumane treatment they often receive, the non-growth that happens, the disassociation from crime. Almost all incarcerated folks will need to rejoin their communities. So we’re telling people not to do harm and then putting them into a harmful situation. You're telling people not to do violence and then we're doing violence to them. And when they come back, they're angry.
When we don't address root causes, when we don't see people and their humanity, we're just creating future problems down the road for ourselves when we over-incarcerate. We’re also creating more problems in their family. Their absence from society, their absence from their family's lives, oftentimes is predictive of what will happen to their children. So generationally, the dysfunction continues. We never address the needs and now we’re talking about a real societal breakdown.
There are serious long-term consequences for us as a society. As I mentioned earlier, Spokane County is spending 70% of its resources on criminal justice. That means we’re spending much of taxpayers’ money in reactionary mode. If even a small sliver of that money could be redeployed into preventative measures, we would get more bang for our buck.
The conventional criminal justice system is also continually stripping people of their agency, their engagement, their needs, and so citizens are disconnecting even more. I was listening to the Strong Towns podcast and they were talking about cities viewing people as consumers. If we’re consumers, we can walk away from our problems. We don't invest in our communities. The whole system is problematic in that respect because we're disengaging more and more, letting somebody else — often the State — try to take control of something they cannot get ahold of.
In the end, we need to ask ourselves what our main goals are around justice. People are scared of what a big job this is, but we have to do it.
Top photo of the U.S. Supreme Court via Jesse Collins.
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