Forgive and Regret: A Comparative Analysis of the Role of Forgiveness in the US and Rwandan Criminal Justice Systems

Abstract

Rwanda’s reconciliation process after the 1994 genocide highlights the power of forgiveness in successfully reintegrating people who have committed serious harms back into society. In contrast, the US criminal justice system has struggled with successful prisoner reenter. One possible factor contributing to this struggle is American’s levels of forgiveness and vengefulness. This study is a comparative analysis between Rwanda and the United States guided by a central research question: What are the sociocultural factors provided for a societal capacity of forgiveness? First, the importance of forgiveness at a societal and individual level and its consequences is documented. Then, through comparative analysis several key factors emerged as contributing to increasing societal forgiveness and/or decreasing societal vengefulness including violence in media and entertainment, a punitive criminal justice system including the highly publicized nature of crime and punishment, gender roles and gender equality, religion, and societal collectivism. Above all factors, the occurrence of a national tragedy such as the genocide in Rwanda was found to create the opportunity for radical criminal justice reform.