If you feel fed-up with criminal justice reform efforts touted by the Koch brothers that leave our prison industrial complex firmly in place, two new books offer practical solutions to the longstanding dilemma of how to hold people accountable for violent crime without perpetuating mass incarceration.
In Until We Reckon, Danielle Sered draws on her work as founder and director of Brooklyn-based Common Justice — the first victim services and alternative-to-incarceration program that focuses on violent felony crimes like gunpoint robberies, shootings and assaults, — to show how restorative justice is a process of charting “a course for repair.” It helps survivors heal and makes us all safer, unlike the current criminal justice system.
In the examples Sered highlights, this process supports healing for survivors, provides an “avenue to dignity” to people who caused harm and fosters their intrinsic motivation not to be violent again. As she notes, “although we can sometimes escape the police, we can never escape ourselves.” This outcome seems much better than imprisonment, which she cautions shares the same core features that often drive violence in the first place: shame, isolation and an inability to meet one’s economic needs.
In a fascinating titled chapter, “Printing Abolition,” Thuma allows us to follow the feminist discussion that unfolded in prison newsletters and grassroots publications about alternatives to relying on law enforcement to protect women against sexual and domestic violence, including a woman’s right to defend herself against her attacker. She features excerpts of letters, essays, poetry and covers from Through the Looking Glass, No More Cages and Aegis: Magazine of Ending Violence Against Women.