Forgiveness restores relationships, friendships, and families. It is the first step to a process of healing for someone who was holding onto a traumatic situation. There should be restorative justice because it is a powerful and important tool to rehabilitate the offender, victim and community to come together in reconcile without being against one another.
The person who was credited with creating the name “restorative justice” was American psychologist Albert Eglash. Eglash wrote in “1959 article “Creative Restitution: Its Roots in Psychiatry, Religion and Law,” which was then compared and contrasted in his 1977 article “Beyond Restitution: Creative Restitution” with the retributive justice (punishment-focused justice) and rehabilitative justice (justice focused on personal reform) perspectives.” Restorative justice sees crime as an offense against governmental authority. It destroys human relationships and bruises victims, communities, and even offenders. Each group is broken and have needs to be met so healing can begin. Crime turns people against one another due to stress, distrust, suspicion, discrimination, division. Crime opens the door to division between friends, relatives, and communities. Britannica states that “restorative justice outcome include restitution, community service, and victim-offender reconciliation.”
In Dallas, Texas, a recent white woman named Amber Guyger, who was a Dallas police officer, was convicted of murdering Brandt Jean’s brother, Botham Jean in his own apartment on September 6, 2018. Guyger mistook Botham Jean’s apartment to be her own, one floor down from his. On ABC News, Guyger’s defense attorneys explains, “Guyger made a tragic and 'reasonable mistake,' believing she'd interrupted an intruder in her own home and using lethal force to defend herself.” But this is not something you let slide just because she assumed and mentally didn’t recognize that was her own home, that’s just an excuse. On September 13, 2018 ABC News states, that “hundreds of friends, loved ones and work colleagues pack Jean's funeral at the Greenville Avenue Church of Christ in the Dallas suburb of Richardson. Several busloads of students and former classmates of Jean from Harding University, a Christian liberal arts college in Searcy, Arkansas, where Jean graduated in 2016, also attend the service.” Guyger was going to have to answer to so many people that known Jean. Guyger tried calling 911 in her car after the incident and was concerned more about losing her job than the innocent life she just took in Jean’s own apartment, and that was unfair and wicked.
Guyger was convicted of murder on October 1 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Brandt Jean was being an a good example of how you supposed to be as a Christian. Brandt told Guyger that he forgives her for murdering his older brother, that she needs Christ and asked the judge if he could hug her. This is an act of restorative justice. Everyone was shocked about what was seen, because it was unexpected by someone whose older brother got murder for no reason. But brought everything into perspective that we should be open to forgive those who do us wrong, so we can be forgiven.
I believe we should maintain or upgrade our ways in restorative justice by building up the act of forgiveness and love despite the outcome. Yes, there is a process and it’ll be hard but, in the end, it’ll bear fruit for future generations, that there won’t be any resentment, anger, hurt rooted within victims' hearts. This act in short-term will cause the offenders to change their actions, hearts and ways in order to become a person that make wise choices before being “trigger happy.” This will help the offender understand how they were wrong, still have to serve their time in prison but is able to receive love. In the long-term, peace will be on the victim's hearts because they forgave their offenders and they won’t have to hold anything against them, so they can live their lives peacefully without allowing what the offenders did to traumatize the and ruin their lives.
The negative result of this will cause people who are against this to bully and talk down on the people who choices to forgive others. They will call them weak people and want to persecute them for standing up to be the bigger person. I have encounter being abused plenty of different ways when I was younger and I had to come into a place where I forgive others actions so I can survive. When you or your family is under attack, forgiveness is the best gift to have so the tragedy doesn’t break you inside out. True forgiveness will set you or the other person free.
The ways Guyger can give back to the people is by giving the family money that they need to support their family. This will be a lot of money due to also paying off Botham Jean’s funeral and the family medical bills. Guyger should do a lot of community service after she gets out of prison to make up for causing commotion within the Dallas Police Department community’s neighbor. Guyger will have to show the community that she can be trusted to live around that place and to show how she’d change her ways. This act goes for any crime that was committed unless they’re mentally crazy and unstable to the point they have to be away from public communities all together. These three will be extra steps in making a living back into society without taking away all of their rights such as jobs, food stamps, housing, and etc. Even though people make the wrong decisions and are not right in their minds when have to know that what we do in private and dark is no greater than what they have done themselves. Murder is wrong and heartbreaking, but we cannot murder another person’s life benefits. They have to serve the time in person and outside of it as well.
Works Cited
- Heath-Thornton, Debra, et al. “Restorative Justice.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2016, www.britannica.com/topic/restorative-justice.
- Hutchinson, Bill. “Death of an Innocent Man: Timeline of Wrong-Apartment Murder Trial of Amber Guyger.” ABC News, ABC News Network, 2 Oct. 2019, abcnews.go.com/US/death-innocent-man-timeline-wrong-apartment-murder-trial/story?id=65938727.
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Restoration Of Human Bonds & Relationships.
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