Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Presentation, Langley Canadian Reformed Church, March 5, 2005
WN: I was grateful to co-present at this evening with current MP Mark Warawa, a former volunteer with M2/W2 Association. It was politically a stretch, but the church is all about “strange bedfellows” brought together in the messiness of God’s grace. The article about the presentation on the ARPA website is here: ARPA RJ Presentation.
An excerpt:
I have been tasked to give you a little bit of a taste of what Restorative Justice is. From the first time the term was used in the professional literature just 30 years ago, to today, there has been an enormous worldwide embrace of Restorative Justice in many criminal justice jurisdictions, especiallyWestern. Like other such movements, there is also enormous variety in expression of what is Restorative Justice.
A simple way to express it is: Restorative Justice is a peacemaking rather than a
warmaking response to crime, whereby ideally all may bring as much closure as possible to the criminal act, with the offender/perpetrator fulfilling obligations to “make it right”, and the victim and impacted community able to move on. In The Little Book of Restorative Justice, Howard Zehr, a leading theorist, writes: “Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible (Howard Zehr, Little Book of Restorative Justice, Intercourse, Pa: Good
Books, 2002, p. 37).”
Please click on: Restorative Justice Vision and Spirituality.
