Changing Lenses - A New Focus for Crime and Justice
Crime victims have many needs, most of which our criminal justice system ignores. In fact, the justice system often increases the injury. Offenders are less ignored by this system, but their real needs -- for accountability, for closure, for healing -- are also left unaddressed.
Such failures are not accidental, but are inherent in the very definitions and assumptions which govern our thinking about crime and justice. Howard Zehr, director of the Mennonite Central Committee U.S. Office of Criminal Justice, proposes a "restorative" model which is more consistent with experience, with the past, and with the biblical tradition. Based on the needs of victims and offenders, he takes into account recent studies and biblical principles.
Does the criminal justice system actually help victims and offenders? What does justice look like for those who have been harmed? For those who have done harm? Twenty-five years after it was first published, Changing Lenses by Howard Zehr remains the classic text of the restorative justice field.