Trauma-Informed Rehabilitation and Restorative Justice

Abstract

Even though trauma affects many prisoners, correctional processes in North America largely ignore its impact, choosing instead to overemphasize the individual psychology of offender conduct in the rehabilitative process. However, if offenders are in fact to desist from crime more attention must shift towards the healing of trauma. There is a significant body of evidence indicating that most people behind bars have experienced individual trauma like family violence, sexual abuse and/or poverty. Individual traumas have roots in structural or collective violence. A capitalistic economy concentrates wealth in the hands of few, giving rise to poverty for others. Patriarchal structures give permission for family violence and sexual abuse, as men are allowed to dominate women and children. Indeed, men are much more likely to be perpetrators of violence than women. Giving rise to the individual traumas in Indigenous Communities in North America are the collective traumas of settler colonialism: physical and cultural genocide; stolen lands and resources; and forced assimilation, which has caused a loss of languages and cultures. Indigenous offenders in Canada make up almost one quarter of the prison population, in spite of being only 3 per cent of the overall population (Sapers, 2013). Native Americans enter prisons at four times the rates of white Americans (Hartney and Vuong, 2009). The psychology of criminal conduct misses both individually and collectively caused traumas.