Molly Rowan Leach wrote a story for opendemocracy.net about how police and the community in Longmont, CO, learned about and embraced restorative justice. Some of the details in the event that involved Officer Greg Ruprecht, who's interview in the video, have been changed to protect those involved. Here's an excerpt:
Officer Ruprecht continued to feel skeptical about this process, but something was definitely changing. He saw how much money had already been saved by choosing to go down this route instead of jailing the boys and sending them into a lengthy and expensive judicial process. He realized that restorative justice had more teeth than conventional punishment because it imposes real, face-to-face accountability among offenders for their actions, and makes them listen directly to the victims of their crimes. He realized that six young lives might be saved from years of cycling in and out of the prison system. He learned that the human brain doesn’t develop fully until the age of twenty-two or thereabouts, so punishment and fear-inciting prison regimes have an even bigger impact on the development of young people. He remembered his own children, and recognized that more than anything else, they and others deserve the chance to make mistakes and pick themselves back up again, sure in the knowledge of their own inherent worth and value.
The story appeared on opendemocracy.net in August, and appeared on DailyGood.org last month. Here's the link to the story on opendemocracy.net.
Comments (0)