Justice Restored

Something clearly is wrong with the current justice system in which repeat incarceration is high, injustice is rampant, and 25 percent of African-American males can expect to spend time behind bars. Colson's biblical ideas for reform have the potential to turn the system around, keep innocent people out of prison, and give victims some relief.

Restoring Justice: An Introduction to Restorative Justice offers a clear and convincing explanation of restorative justice, a movement within criminal justice with growing worldwide influence. It explores the broad appeal of this new vision and offers a brief history of its development. The book presents a theoretical foundation for the principles and values of restorative justice and develops its four cornerpost ideas of encounter, amends, inclusion and reintegration. After exploring how restorative justice ideas and values may be integrated into policy and practice, it presents a series of key issues commonly raised about restorative justice, summarizing various perspectives on each. Van Ness and Strong are renowned scholars in the field of restorative justice. Appendices include a case study to help illustrate the concepts of the text and internet resources on topics in restorative justice.

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.

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 typically stand as opposing ideals of liberal and communitarian philosophies. Joshua Mason argues that engaging their Chinese counterparts, zhengyi and hexie, through cross-cultural hermeneutics reveals a pattern of interrelated concerns that can overcome this binary opposition and reconcile these global values.

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.

Ecological restoration integrates the science and art of repairing ecosystems damaged by human activities. Despite relatively little attention from environmental ethicists, restoration projects continue to gain significance, drawing on citizen volunteers and large amounts of public funds, providing an important model of responding to ecological crisis. Projects range from the massive, multi-billion dollar Kissimmee River project; restoring 25,000 acres of Everglades' wetlands; to the $30 million effort to restore selected wetlands in industrial Brownfield sites in Chicago's south side Lake Calumet area; to the reintroduction of tall grass prairie ecosystems in various communities in the Midwest. Restored to Earth provides the first comprehensive examination of the religious and ethical dimensions and significance of contemporary restoration practice, an ethical framework that advances the field of environmental ethics in a more positive, action-oriented, experience-based direction. Van Wieren brings together insights and examples from restoration ecology, environmental ethics, religious studies, and conservation and Christian thought, as well as her own personal experiences in ecological restoration, to propose a new restoration ethic grounded in the concrete, hands-on experience of humans working as partners with the land.