Key differences: Courts and community circles

Abstract

We need a broad spectrum of responses to crime. Everyone knows that. Yet we persist in believing that a formal criminal justice response is the process of choice. Whose choice? Is it simply because we have invested too many public resources for too long to even see that more is not only not better, not capable of fixing what obviously doesn't work, but continues to make things worse? What explains our persistent “march of folly” into greater dependency and increasing public expenditures on formal justice systems. Our “9–1‐1 mentality” has atrophied our participatory skills. In allowing others to resolve our conflicts, we lose the essential community building experience that comes from working together to resolve differences. Giving communities back the responsibility to handle their conflicts must begin by giving up much of the inordinate state power accumulated over the past 100 years—power that has been taken from individuals, families and communities. We need to explore new partnerships, genuine partnerships that respect and use the gifts, skills and wisdom of all partners. We need to keep trying to find a way to make partnerships work, to make communities work, to engage conflicts as a means of building communities, of empowering individuals to take responsibility. Yes, we must also listen to the voices of the past that warn us of vigilantism and discriminatory practices. We know these weaknesses of community empowerment. We also know the weakness of the formal justice system. It is drawing on the strength of both in building new partnerships that sets the challenge for all of us. This paper speaks of sentencing circles or peacemaking circles as one option for a new partnership that draws on the best of both partners. In discussing some of the primary differences between circles and formal justice processes, the paper aspires to explore how circles broaden the spectrum of responses to conflict and how new partnerships can be forged.