Justice Restored

Justice Restored is a true story of two young men who meet one early morning in Albany, New York. Gary Geiger is an amateur athlete who works the night shift at a motel close to New York's state capitol. Wayne Blanchard is a high school drop out, on parole from a robbery of a pizza delivery man back in Syracuse. Wayne and five of his partners decide to rob the motel. They hear that due to tourism, there may be up to $50, 000 in the safe. In the course of the robbery they find only $150 dollars. Thinking they have knocked Gary out, the gang splits. Wayne takes a final look in and sees Gary running to a door. Is he going to pull an alarm? Wayne shoots, turns and runs to the getaway car. Gary is seriously wounded. After leaving the state, Wayne is finally apprehended and tried. Based on Gary's testimony, Wayne is convicted and sentenced to twelve and one half to twenty-five years in prison. Gary suffers post-traumatic stress for years and feels the only way he can finally recover is to meet with Wayne in the correctional facility. Dr. Thomas Christian from the New York State Unified Court System prepares Gary and Wayne to have a victim and offender mediation. Home Box Office hears about the meeting and receives permission from all parties to film the encounter. After airing internationally, the program is nominated for an Ace award. Gary is relieved and has his questions answered and finds closure. He forgives Wayne and encourages him to change his lifestyle. Wayne takes responsibility for his behavior and is accountable to Gary for his actions. Gary now not only survives from the trauma but thrives on it as he speaks to many schools, and community and victims groups using the HBO video ofthe mediation as a teaching tool. After serving twelve and on half years (the minimum sentence), Wayne was up for parole consideration. Gary recommends Wayne get a second chance. While out on parole, Wayne witnesses a drive by shooting and recognizes the perpetrators. He comes to Gary and Dr. Christian to seek their advice. Should he turn the people in and be labeled a snitch or stand up for his community and testify against them. Wayne decides to repay Gary and the community for his past crime and comes forward and testifies. Two more predators are taken off the streets. Truly, a sense of justice is now restored for both Gary Geiger and Wayne Blanchard.

Justice and harmony have long been two of the world’s most treasured ideals, but much of modern moral and political philosophy puts them on opposite sides of the divide between liberal theories of the right and communitarian theories of the good. Joshua Mason argues that the encounter with their Chinese counterparts, zhengyi and hexie, can overcome this opposition, revealing a pattern that reframes justice and harmony as mutually interdependent concepts in a three-part framework of root harmony (benhe), harmonic justice (heyi), and just harmony (zhenghe). Broadly surveying the histories of western and Chinese moral and political philosophies, Justice and Harmony: Cross-Cultural Ideals in Conflict and Cooperation explores our cross-cultural conceptual inventories and develops a comparative framework that can overcome entrenched binary oppositions and reconcile these grand global values.

Examining the 'Conciliation in Equity' program in Colombia, this book provides a dramatic, cross-cultural example of community justice and a model for developing alternative methods of resolving crime and conflict.

Whether born in the Mideast, Africa, Asia, or brought home to the streets of America, violent hatreds often threaten to swamp the minimal cooperation needed to foster life and health. Does Christianity have anything besides warmed-over pieties to offer a world torn by estrangement, alienation, and violently opposed worldviews? In this signal contribution to public theology, John de Gruchy, an internationally esteemed political theologian, emphatically affirms the possibility and necessity of reconciliation. For Christians, he says, reconciliation is the center and perennial test of their faith. De Gruchy expands reconciliation's relevance beyond personal piety and ecclesial harmony to encompass group relations, politics, and even the environment. In all cases, he argues, it involves the restoration of justice. Forged in the recent experience of South Africa, his work delineates the political and ecclesial significance of reconciliation and shows its importance for interreligious relations, addressing victimization, and international peace. Reconciliation will be welcomed by all whose faith leads them to help alleviate the world's mounting agonies.

All over the world, the practice of peacebuilding is beset with common dilemmas: peace versus justice, religious versus secular approaches, individual versus structural justice, reconciliation versus retribution, and the harmonization of the sheer number of practices involved in repairing past harms. Progress towards resolving these dilemmas requires reforming institutions and practices but also clear thinking about basic questions: What is justice? And how is it related to the building of peace? The twin concepts of reconciliation and restorative justice, both involving the holistic restoration of right relationship, contain not only a compelling logic of justice but also great promise for resolving peacebuilding's tensions and for constructing and assessing its institutions and practices. This book furthers this potential by developing not only the core content of these concepts but also their implications for accountability, forgiveness, reparations, traditional practices, human rights, and international law.

"It could well be that the Savior chose to teach principles relating to His infinite Atonement through the carefully cloaked statements contained in these seemingly simple stories of everyday life." This gospel study is the first of its kind to focus attention wholly on the Atonement as the centerpiece of Christ's parables. Join six celebrated LDS scholars in an in-depth examination of specific parables of the Master that teach us directly about the Atonement. Every page of this inspiring book will illuminate aspects of the Lord's ultimate act of redemption and will help the reader better understand the mercy, justice, depth, and power of His infinite sacrifice for all humankind. Come to understand the parables of redemption through this detailed study of six stories from the New Testament.

The substantially revised third edition of this widely-used text introduces nine major theoretical approaches and their key protagonists, including a new chapter on global justice, and assesses their ability to generate clear, consistent and illuminating accounts of justice as a distinctive social, political and legal value.

A story of Jimmy Steele's brutal murder by Bryce Todd Brosier. His willingness to take responsibility and be accountable for his actions, his remorse, compassion, and empathy for Peggy Steele, Jimmy's mother, and Beth Stephenson, Jimmy's cousin, has allowed for Peggy's forgiveness, grace, and healing and Beth's healing. This was accomplished after they met face-to-face in the prison where Bryce was incarcerated for a restorative-justice high-risk victim-offender dialogue. Peggy was able to ask the very difficult questions surrounding Jimmy's death. Did he struggle? Did he suffer? Did he say anything? If so, what were his last words? Bryce's willingness to answer Peggy's questions in detail has allowed her the peace she needs to accept the truth and no longer imagine many different scenarios surrounding her son's murder. This is the story of how restorative justice has changed the lives of Bryce, Peggy, and Beth and the journey they continue to pursue spreading the values of restorative justice in their lives. aEURf