Talk at the Religious Coalition for a Non Violent Durham

On Thursday, February 27, 2014 I spoke to a gathering of community members at the community lunch held by the Religious Coalition for a Non-Violent Durham.

Thank you friends for inviting me to spend some time with you over lunch today. I am a Quaker lawyer trying to imagine a different way to handle our divisions around race and poverty. Whether you believe the police are engaging in racial profiling or not, whether you believe police are conducting searches without evidence of crime on people of color, there is no dispute that many people in our community feel like the police are an occupying force. Many people of color and poor people in our community are truly afraid of the police. I am not hear to litigate the issues of racial profiling, unlawful searches, or excessive force. I want us to imagine a different way to deal with these problems other than litigation. Right now, all we have is the hammer of the justice system. We can draw on our collective wisdom to find other tools in our tool kit to resolve these problems in our community. We can bring more voices to the table, and focus on healing the harm rather than on guilt and punishment.

I imagine a process that focuses on healing the harm, holds the persons who caused the harm accountable, and includes community voices in naming the harm and facilitating the resolution. This is a restorative justice process. What if we found a way to have a hearing facilitated by trained facilitators to hear the stories of people who have been stopped, searched, or harmed by the police. We can hear how they have been harmed as a community. We could hear from community members affected by these practices. We could hear from police who feel demoralized by these accusations who do not participate in these practices. We could hear from the police accused of this behavior. Then we can have a conversation as a community on how to heal this harm and move forward.

This process was used in Seattle to help heal the community when a city police officer killed a Native American with a knife. (http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/a-restorative-circle-in-the-wake-of-a-police-shooting )

In addition to a formal restorative justice process for addressing our divisions around race and poverty, I imagine all kinds community approaches to discussing these problems. In every church, library, school, we can have conversations, play back theater, art murals, and other creative ways to raise these issues together.

Part of the discussion needs to include the racial disparities in suspensions in our schools. As we struggle to try to find ways to keep our kids in school, we should stop kicking them out by suspending them. When children make mistakes we need to help them learn from the mistakes and return to our community. Instead we are giving them criminal records at the age of 16 and throwing them to the street. An important part of restorative justice is treating all people as members of our community worth the time and compassion to include within our circle. We also need to help the members of our community returning from prison to integrate into our community, instead of leaving them forever relegated to the margins of our society where they are likely to commit crimes again.

With the race for District Attorney and the conversations on these issues at the City Council and Human Relations Commission, Durham is at a unique cross roads to choose a different path.  I have provided a handout with some concrete suggestions on how we might go down a different path.  Unless we dare to image and try a different way, we will be stuck with guilt and punishment, deny and defend, costly litigation, and hammers and nails. I believe we can do better together as a community.

Handout:

Restorative Justice

Scott Holmes, scott.holmes@nccu.edu

 Restorative Justice is an approach to criminal conduct that addresses victims’ harms and needs, holds offenders accountable to put right those harms, and involves victims, offenders and communities in this process.

Criminal Justice System	Restorative Justice
Crime is a violation of the law and the State	Crime is a violation of people, connected in relationships
Violations create guilt	Violations create obligations
Justice requires the State to determine blame (guilt) and impose pain (punishment)	Justice involves victims, offenders, and community members in an effort to put things right
Central Focus: offenders getting what they deserve	Central focus: victim healing, offender responsibility for repairing harm
Asks: What laws have been broken, who did it, what do they deserve	Asks: Who has been hurt, what are their needs, whose obligation is to repair harm?
Adversarial system of winners and losers	Collaborative processes and consensual outcomes
Determines guilt, issues punishment	Supports victims, looks at root causes of crime, finds healing for victims and offenders, supporting both

Underlying restorative justice is a vision of interconnectedness. We are all connected with each other in a web of relationships. When the web is disrupted by acts of crime, what is needed is healing processes which repair harm and hold people accountable. The current criminal justice system causes more harm, more disruptions to the web, by punishment and pain for perpetrators and isolation for victims. Restorative Justice Practices are characterized by a fundamental respect in the human dignity of every person, and their healthy inclusion in our community.

Kinds of Restorative Practices that may be beneficial in State Courts:

 

1.      School mediation, Family Group Conferencing, Community Service and Victim/Offender reconciliation programs that reduce court referrals and suspensions by using dispute resolution techniques that strengthen community.

2.      Police Warning/Cautioning Programs that divert cases from court prior to charge by using Mediation, Family Group Conferencing, services outreach and treatment programs, community service, and Victim/Offender Reconciliation. We need to find ways to avoid giving our children criminal records by diverting them into evidence based alternative programs and keeping them from the prison pipeline.

3.      Court diversion to Family Group Conferencing, Victim/Offender Reconciliation programs to supplement sentencing and give victims and community members greater role in shaping of sanctions/resolutions.

 FADE Recommendations on Reforming Police Practices

 

1.      End Current Racial Profiling – Mandate Written Consent for all Vehicle Searches. The next District Attorney could agree to refuse to prosecute any cases resulting from "consent searches" where the officer does not have the person sign a written consent form.

2.      Racial Equity Training for Officers

3.      Make Marijuana Enforcement Lowest Enforcement Priority, Increase availability of pre-trial diversion programs

4.      Create Inclusive Task Force to investigate Civilian Review Board Best Practices

http://www.southerncoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/FADE-Coalition-Policy-Recommendations-Final.pdf

 

Recommendations for the Next District Attorney

 

5.      Stop Unnecessary Incarceration: Stop asking for incarceration for non-violent offenses, and take action to get non-violent offenders out of jail and in an alternative supervision, treatment support program at the Criminal Justice Resource Center. In particular get children, poor people, and people with mental illness out of the Durham County Jail and into services. Use citations, criminal summons, rather than arrest warrants for non-violent offenses.

6.      Divert Children away from Court: Support Judge Morey’s initiative to have police to divert children (16 and 17 year olds) from the court system who would otherwise be treated as adults in our system. Create a warning program that provides services and support rather than sending kids to court.

7.      Restorative Justice and Victim advocates: Support the role of victim advocates in the prosecution process and provide restorative justice alternatives for victims who want facilitated restorative justice conference instead of  or in addition to the criminal justice process.

8.      Change Cultural Relationship between Police Department and District Attorneys Office:  Hold police officers accountable who fail to fill out reports, fail to come to court, fail to conduct adequate investigations, conduct illegal searches, engage in unlawful drug investigation techniques, and issue charges without adequate evidence.

 

Recommendations for our Community

 

9.      Support CJRC: Increase funding for Criminal Justice Resource Center to accommodate increased role for supervision, vocational training, addiction treatment, housing assistance, family support.

10.  Stop Suspensions: Change suspension policies to work with children who make mistakes, instead of discarding them to the Street. The best way to keep children in school is to stop throwing them out.

11.  Fund Restorative Justice Training, Education, and Facilitation: Allocate a portion of City budget for a restorative justice office to train, educate, and facilitate cases where victims would prefer a restorative justice process instead of or in addition to the Court process to facilitate their healing, hold the offender accountable, and make room for community voices in our justice system. Hold a formal truth and reconciliation hearing on present issues of violence, and informal community events.

Other Reading – A Restorative Circle in the Wake of Police Shooting (Restorative Justice in Seattle for Police Shooting of Native American with knife) http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/a-restorative-circle-in-the-wake-of-a-police-shooting

The Durham Herald Sun wrote the following article on the talk and discussion:

 

Lawyer outlines how Durham can have restorative justice

Mar. 01, 2014 @ 05:46 PM

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan

DURHAM —

Lawyer Scott Holmes laid out his recommendations to the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham for how Durham police, the district attorney and community can foster restorative justice.
Holmes, who is a Quaker, spoke during the Religious Coalition’s monthly roundtable Thursday. Restorative justice is a term to describe justice beyond punishment, when those who commit the crime and those who are victims of crime meet in a circle atmosphere and discuss justice beyond what the law prescribes.
He asked the coalition to think about what it would look like if God was working on Durham’s issues.
“It would be a whole different process,” he said. Litigation is how society fixes things, he said, and the answer is always punishment.

“What about healing? What if the first question is, ‘How do we heal from this harm?’” Holmes asked. He talked about how children are punished but also told to say they are sorry.

He said a courtroom has two tables, each with lawyers, and the family sits in the back. Instead, he imagines circles that include police officers, judges, non-judges, someone to referee like RCND leader Marcia Owen, and someone to record what happened as well as the people involved. He said there should be lots of little meetings before the big meeting.

“Restorative justice” are new fancy words, Holmes said, but the circles are old “since people sat around a fire.” Circles wouldn’t be adversarial, but name the harm and offer a chance to say “sorry.”

“One conversation ain't gonna do it, but it’s a great starting place,” he said. Holmes said there can be more than just meetings – things like playback theater, the circle process and murals.

“In every church, library and school we can have these conversations. Every time there’s harm in the community,” he said.

Holmes suggested coalition members ask the current Durham district attorney candidates to stop incarceration for nonviolent offenders, divert children away from the court system, restore justice and victim advocates, and change the cultural relationship between the Durham Police Department and the Durham District Attorney’s Office.

For the community’s part, Holmes suggested they support increased funding for the Criminal Justice Resource Center, stop out-of-school suspensions, and fund restorative justice training, education and facilitation. He wants there to be a formal truth and reconciliation hearing on Durham issues of violence.
Effie Steele of RCND said that they need a band leader for a step-by-step process for what Holmes suggested.

“We need something to hitch our wagon on, because we’ve been talking about it for years,” she said.
The Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham’s annual Vigil Against Violence will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Shepherds House United Methodist Church, 107 N. Driver St., Durham.  The vigil in the sanctuary will honor the 31 people whose lives ended in violence in Durham in 2013. For information, visit www.nonviolentdurham.org.