February 14, 2013
The Restoration Of Faith: Striving for a Broader Understanding of Retribution
Amitava Kumar in Caravan:
ON A RECENT WEEKEND I picked up the New York Times that is delivered in a blue polythene bag outside my door each morning, and read a story about a young man who had fatally shot his girlfriend during a fight. The young man’s name was Conor McBride and the victim’s name was Ann Margaret Grosmaire. Both were 19 when this happened, in March 2010, in Tallahassee, Florida.
The reporter, Paul Tullis, introduced an early note about what made the story unusual. Ann’s father, Andy Grosmaire, standing next to his “intubated and unconscious” daughter in hospital, heard her say before her death, “Forgive him.” Conor, when he was booked, was asked to provide the names of five people who could visit him in jail. He included the name of Ann’s mother, Kate Grosmaire. Talking to the reporter who had written the story, Kate explained her desire to go and see Conor in prison, “Before this happened, I loved Conor. I knew that if I defined Conor by that one moment—as a murderer—I was defining my daughter as a murder victim. And I could not allow that to happen.”
The state attorney’s office had charged Conor McBride with first-degree murder; this meant that he was likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. (As the case didn’t have any aggravating circumstances, like prior convictions or the victim being a child, the prosecutors were probably not likely to seek the death penalty.) But Ann’s parents told the assistant state attorney that they didn’t want Conor to spend the rest of his life in prison. The concept that the Grosmaires had embraced, together with Conor’s parents, Julie and Michael McBride, was that of “restorative justice”, a not very widely known practice based on the idea of victim–offender dialogue.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:40 PM | Permalink
Comments
There's a flip side to this concept, too. If a victim can declare a state-mandated penalty overly harsh, doesn't logical consistency require that a victim can *also* declare it too lenient? I know that if any of my loved ones was violated or murdered, no state-sanctioned punishment would satisfy me. I'd happily endorse the concept of restorative justice if it meant that I'd then have the option of personally torturing to death anyone that had wronged my family. I mean, _that's_ restorative: I get to inflict a level of suffering comparable to what I've experienced.
Posted by: wtinasky | Feb 14, 2013 8:15:42 PM
Robin, thank you for this post.
There is so much more to be said on this subject, obviously. Kumar's article was all too brief, not for any failing on his part, but because the subject matter is as monumental as it is central to individuals and society.
I would like to see a more incisive discussion on forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive? Personally, I think it is an idea that has many definitions for just as many circumstances. There is a type of forgiveness in which the one offended absorbs the pain and cost of the transgression, refuses to diminish the offender as a human being, and generously aids the perpetrator in the building of self-worth. There is another type of forgiveness where the victim is able to let go of anger, rage, and craving for revenge that heretofore were destroying the victim from within. The process of healing involves diminishing the importance of the rapist, for example, as a perpetual intrusion into one's life. This kind of forgiveness is a freeing of the victim to live life on one's own terms, not that of the rapist.
Forgiving is complicated, and can be different in different situations. The idea of forgiving might be a displacement of a goal of retribution, with a focus on one's recovery, healing, and integration. The term 'closure' is, and has always been, a term that does not apply.
Posted by: Norman Costa | Feb 15, 2013 1:12:30 AM
Fascinating - thank you for finding articles like this one.
Posted by: Klausi | Feb 15, 2013 2:29:50 AM
I'd trust forgiveness-boosters more if they typically demonstrated greater awareness of game theoretical considerations, or even just simple common sense. Forgiveness intrinsically risks being anti-deterrence, by decreasing the costs of defecting or free-riding. Also, refusing to forgive or let things slide is itself a form of altruism, in the strictest sense.
I also want to push away at the high-ground forgiveness talk seems to automatically occupy: this rhetoric forces unrealistic, often unfair demands upon already suffering people without consideration for their own needs or capacities. It can do so quite needlessly, as when it's perfectly possible for someone to 'move on' without going through a process of conspicuously forgiving a transgressor.
I don't claim the damn thing is worthless, not at all. Forgiveness makes great sense as a deescalation logic, and we definitely need those. But there are very good reasons why it must be kept in strong check, and forgiveness pietists usually don't say nearly enough about when and why.
Posted by: prasad | Feb 15, 2013 10:32:04 AM
... and some of us think revenge no bad thing. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/07/revenge-insurance-a-few-short-steps-to-the-gallows.html
Posted by: Tomkow | Feb 15, 2013 10:49:23 AM
Forgiveness can be wonderful: in moderation.
Unfortunately there is a vanity often attached - as in, 'I'm forgiving therefore holier than thou'. This is when, as Prasad points out above, it 'forces unrealistic, often unfair demands upon already suffering people'.
It is this venal excess of 'forgiveness' that results in horrors such as serious criminals being released and re-offending repeatedly ...
Posted by: Vivek T | Feb 15, 2013 12:10:38 PM
The comments here are thoughtful and thought provoking. But the concept of forgiveness is taken as a given and undifferentiated, and that we all understand what it means. Too, seeing forgiveness and retribution at opposing thoughts and behaviors didn't help in furthering our understanding. Forgiveness and forgiving are not cut from whole cloth, nor would they apply, without discrimination, in all cases.
Forgiveness as self-aggrandizing, holier-than-thou fare is certainly part of the discussion. Though some person is motivated by selfishness and self-centeredness, it shouldn't keep us from understanding the idea of forgiveness as multifaceted, and differently applied.
The pietists have done us a disservice by admonishing and encouraging forgiveness as a singular human gesture that serves all sinners, no matter the gravity and circumstance of the transgression. The irony of this is that the one who fails to forgive at first light is now seen as the offender and criticized, even ostracized, by the pietists. Two real examples are 1. those who dismiss Holocaust survivors, and their survivors, for not forgiving the inhuman terrorists of the Third Reich; and 2. the Church that now demonizes the survivors of clergy sex abuse of minors. They say that the Pope acknowledged the crimes and apologized for all sick offenders, and for all time. So why can't the victims forgive the Church and move on? This shows not only the emotional adulteration of the souls of Church leaders, but their complete ignorance of what clergy sex abuse is and what are its consequences.
Posted by: Norman Costa | Feb 15, 2013 3:41:52 PM
It is for them to decide, not us. We should stay to hell out of it. Two kids, overcome with emotions, hormones - who knows what. It's beyond me.
Posted by: James F Traynor | Feb 15, 2013 4:10:23 PM
I read this story quite a while back, and it's very haunting. A close reading suggests Conor McBride, the shooter, came from a background where domestic violence was common, and that the couple, though very young, had explosive disagreements. In addition, Ann Grosmaire was on her knees pleading with him for her life when he shot her. To listen to his account, it seems he didn't know, after such a long rough sleepless night, what on Earth to do but to shoot her. It was almost reflexively that he took the loaded shotgun from the closet where he knew it was. "They're both great kids," a friend of the families involved later observed. "Just not together."
If Conor had shot my daughter to death as she pled for her life, I would not care whether he made a soft landing. But that's beside the point -- he didn't. The mother of the girl he did shoot had her own way of seeking justice -- as did the parents of Amy Biehl, who was famously murdered in South Africa 20 years ago. The Biehl family sought to create meaning from tragedy by coming to the aid of the whole township that was home to Amy's murderers, a group of very, very young men. At the time, restorative justice was a relatively new concept. Not many in the West understood. "Let's not try to be over-smart about this," Desmond Tutu remarked -- words of wisdom if ever there were any.
The emotional yearnings of the bereaved may take any form; for some, this is the crucible, where, if you have ethics, they are put to the test, and you want to stand with your deepest hand highest convictions more than you want vengeance. More, perhaps, than you want justice. The Grosmaire family seems to have wanted a form of justice they could live with, and in which they were participants. As long as the result was only slightly gentler than the 25-to-life sentence Conor was looking at anyway, who would stop them? The trouble would come when a different kind of family felt itself best served by a harsher sentence than the law allowed, and never ceased to press for that.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Feb 15, 2013 5:09:42 PM
In my view, Amitava Kumar was more interested in the story of the attorney, Sujatha Baliga. “...[F]rom as far back as Baliga can remember, she was sexually abused by her father.” Yet, this victim of great abuse, and now a survivor, is a pioneer in restorative justice in this country.
Kumar wrote: "Baliga told me that the significance of restorative justice lay in “community-based processes that hold people who harm directly accountable to the people that they’ve harmed.”"
I get the distinct impression that there is nothing sentimental or pious in Baliga's principles. She is reasoned, practical, and straight-forward. Her principled feet are planted firmly on the ground. She has no illusions about society (the criminal justice system) being able to change the behaviors of gang rapists who murder. Their foundations in mental illness and family violence are beyond the ability of the culture to rectify and restore.
There are those who respond to her idea of restorative justice - even forgiveness - with a retort-in-question-form that goes something like, "Yeah, but what about [INSERT EXAMPLE OF HORRIBLE EVIL]? Well, she did address the issue, and it may be worthwhile to go back for another read.
Posted by: Norman Costa | Feb 15, 2013 6:15:42 PM
The principle of restorative justice is meant firstly, I think, to be considered with a whole society in view. Its concern is with what happens widely when atonement and correction are prioritized over, or at least balanced with, punishment and retribution.
We all trespass -- for to err is human, etc. -- and this issue deserves to be seen with wider eyes: Think how different it would feel if our general expectations of each other (and therefore of ourselves) were less condemnatory, if we didn't assumed incorrigibility quite so easily. We might more readily and mutually become corrigible; and paths to redemption might come to outnumber paths to prison. Anthropologists have told me that in some societies this is the case.
Posted by: LWP | Feb 16, 2013 12:33:20 AM
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