*this piece originally appeared at truthout (with special thanks to Editor Maya Schenwar)

By Molly Rowan Leach, Founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise

In 1995 my mother went into full blown psychosis as a result of a drastic change in the medication she was taking for schizo-affective disorder. She lured some of our friends and neighbors into our home and took the youngest, a toddler, into the basement bedroom. Once there, she slashed the child’s throat with a knife because of a voice telling her she had to. The toddler survived despite a massive loss of blood.

Mom had suffered from mental illness for most of her life in some form or another, and her new doctor at that time had reduced her antipsychotic medication without monitoring the effects. She had tried to take her own life after I was born, so afraid of being a bad mother that she thought it would be better if she exited, but I had no idea that she was managing life with depression that turned into bipolar disorder in my teens. She never harmed me. Quite the opposite — I was loved and supported by both my parents. But I do remember, and live with, the stigma that surrounds people with mental illness and everyone who loves them.

After the attack my mother was arrested, obliterated out of her mind. The media went wild, and she became the town monster. The magnitude of what she had done and the fear it elicited was everywhere. Others in the neighborhood began monitoring my family. They wanted to make sure the monster was put away for life. People I had known since I was a kid turned against us.

Restorative justice values and strives to honor the needs of everyone involved in the most humane ways possible and in a safe environment — those who commit crimes, and those who suffer from them. In so doing, it brings humanity back into the justice system. It converts a limited worldview based around isolation and individualism into a much more positive vision that is rooted in honesty, accountability, and the visible connection of causes with effects. And it works in concrete terms by drastically reducing recidivism and costs. Most important of all, it nurtures new relationships and a strong sense of human unity. In that sense, the root power of restorative justice is love expressed in action.

This is not to shy away from the need for accountability or regret. I cannot overstate the utter sadness that I and my family have felt for what happened ever since, the desire to take away the pain from my mom’s victim and those who love her. The empathy and care we felt and still feel has never had a chance to be fully seen or expressed given the shambles of a criminal justice system that pits people against one another to further detriment and destruction — not to mention the total lack of opportunities for a mentally ill person to try to communicate their authentic feelings and reach for accountability under the harrowing conditions of imprisonment, where they are denied proper psychiatric treatment. This has been a hex for us all.

My mom was put on trial in the spring of 1996. I testified that she was not a criminal, but has a mental illness. I stand by that to this day. The court was cold and bifurcating: divided aisles, and a mix of fear, judgment and unspoken hatred mingling in the air. The judge ruled that my mother did not belong in prison due to her illness, and she was sentenced to house arrest and stringent rules for probation. If she violated them, she’d face 15 years in jail. And that’s when the neighborhood witch hunt resumed in earnest.

In 1996 and 1997, the Probation Officer received slews of calls about my mother’s case, falsely reporting violations. One group of neighbors followed my family around like bloodhounds, and one day at a water aerobics class at the local YMCA they found out that her caretaker had gone back to the locker room because she had a cold. Although my mom was in the pool with other responsible adults, this was one of the things cited by the group as a violation of her probation.

She was summoned to a hearing and from there to prison to begin her sentence (the judge who had issued a clear ruling against incarceration at the initial trial was now up for a possible spot on the state Supreme Court, and this may have influenced his decision). I remember the day she was taken away very clearly. My father and I sat with her. “Molly, you have to live your life — go on,” she told me. That was the last time I saw her outside of prison until 2014. It was 1999. I was 29 years old.

I visited my mother at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Eastern Idaho, a dank university town with a strange oppression in the air. The prison is located as far as possible from most of Idaho’s other major cities, which is a common pattern in American society — to make it as hard as possible to keep up any kind of contact or relationship with incarcerated family members. My mom became another number, 48985 to be exact.

In the western world prisons have become de facto asylums. Data are very difficult to gather, but it’s estimated that over half the prison population in the USA are mentally ill. At Pocatello, female prisoners shared a host of human rights violations with me: one belly-chained at her child’s birth with an officer watching the whole proceedings. Others forced to strip naked and be probed in their vagina or anus on suspicion of hiding items. Women with babies and small children who were not allowed extended or overnight visits. Mentally ill prisoners like my mother who were punished in the ‘hole’ — placed in solitary confinement — for being honest about their symptoms. On and on, repeat ad nauseam.

In our failure to acknowledge everybody’s shadow side we act out our fears on the most vulnerable members of society. We scapegoat the mentally ill and treat them as though everything is their fault. We are unwilling to acknowledge the sickness that imprisons us in our own patterns of projection. Afraid to face the truth, we cannot enact true or lasting change. Transformation is only possible if we set ourselves free from these limitations and acknowledge the injustice that lies at the heart of the justice system.

My own work as an advocate for restorative justice emerged from these experiences. I saw needs go unmet for decades for everyone involved. I saw no chance of healing, or even of the slightest opening towards it in the prison system. I knew that what I’d experienced was the exact opposite of justice. Justice is respect and communication, and true accountability and reparation. It means distinguishing the individual as separate from their crime and the harm it has caused, and truthfully evaluating the unique conditions that inform a person’s actions. Justice is helping all people — including offenders — to be and feel accountable for what they have done, and to work together to make things right.

I can’t be anything but grateful for the opportunity to choose love over fear again and again throughout the last 25 years, and to live out that commitment in my work. I’ve done everything I can to respect and understand how my mother’s actions have affected others in the community, and to listen to the often ugly, revenge-based messages I’ve received from strangers. I know that housing 25 per cent of the world’s prisoners in American jails when only five per cent of the world’s population lives in the USA is both morally wrong and substantively ineffective as the basis for justice and reconciliation. I know that corporations with vested interests are passionate about filling every prison bed. I know that punishment only exacerbates the problem.

I know that stories like my mom’s must be held and heard safely to provide the raw material for healing. I know that people do not heal when they are pitted against each other and made to play a ruthless game of blame and shame. I know that by humanizing those stories we release the possibility of redemption, and come to understand our shared humanity. Without doubt, I know that restorative justice makes real the fact that conflict, pain, suffering and crime are part of all our existence. They constitute our shadow side.

Facing those shadows head on, naming them, and valuing people for who they are and not for the crimes they have committed, opens the way to offer a renewed sense of belonging to those we realize we have discarded. As Carl Jung once wrote, “if [we] only learn to deal with [our] own shadow [we] have done something real for the world. We have succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.”

Salzburg Global Fellow and Founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise Molly Leach knows from experience that storytelling has the power to restore human connection

*This op-ed article originally appeared at the Salzburg Global Seminar's Media Academy site and is credited thus.

This op-ed was written by Molly Leach, who attended the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change in July 2024.

The central theme of this year's Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change was exploring the deep human need for belonging and the obstacles we face as artificial intelligence (AI) encroaches into every aspect of our lives. Titled “Belonging in The Age of Machines: Reimagining the Soul of Media”, participants from across the world collaborated for two weeks in Salzburg, fueled by the heart and spirit of the 40,000 Salzburg Global Fellows before us who have aspired to make our world the one we know is possible.

During the second week of our intensive and extremely generative space, faculty member Roman Gerodimos invited us all to participate in the "Living Library", a project that was inspired by his long-time attendance at the Media Academy. He offered a space for people to choose to be either a “book” or a “reader” to share personal stories of social exclusion and disconnection. This project is an example of the many life-changing initiatives that have resulted from the Media Academy and continue to this day.

This experience was profoundly moving for me and everyone involved – “books” and “readers” alike. I heard how meaningful it was for “books” to feel listened to deeply, some for the first time, and for “readers” to feel the transformation in themselves through this common humanity across real and perceived barriers.

I participated as a “book” alongside seventeen other people. My title was “Daughter of A Monster”, as I recounted the details of when my mother became criminally insane and was incarcerated; my written essay elaborates on my experience.

The concept of belonging and its interrelationship with the power of storytelling has been at the heart of my work, much of it inspired by my own lived experiences in the United States as the daughter of what society would term a violent criminal. I have experienced the implications of how that impacts life in very subtle and very overt ways and the role media plays in perpetuating destructive narratives.

I have seen firsthand how our criminal justice system destroys lives, profits off of people’s mistakes, categorizes and discards individuals, takes voices away from the already voiceless, and perpetuates a state of discord and destruction.

At the heart of our humanity resounds the deeply important need of belonging - to be seen, heard, and truly understood. Feeling safe in one’s storytelling is unequivocally one of the most urgent and important aspects of creating spaces of connection. We underestimate the power and impact of micro-spaces that are fugitive, and free, and bridge people back from isolation and exclusion. Throughout the Media Academy, we returned to the quote of Salzburg Global Fellow Margaret Mead, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

We asked tough questions and dove deep into the challenges and discomforts of our current media hemisphere. If we think of media as a reflection of our current state of connection, or disconnection, we see some challenges. We must simplify and return to the ground level of our hearts, minds, and being-ness, in order to understand the solutions to the gargantuan problem of AI and the way many technological devices have in fact taken us away from each other and out of presence.

The art of presence requires us to be with one another in deeply meaningful ways, like only humans can do. We have imagination, we have creativity, we have will, and we can manifest these key qualities that are not characteristics that come from machines.

The "Living Library" experience offered a space for human connection that reveals a sense of connection and understanding, and a potential to bear witness to the shame and pain of others and find common seeds of experiences. It may seem like there needs to be a more intellectual approach to the answers that we are seeking around how we push back, how we stand for one another, how we defend humanness, and how we rediscover the deeply connected experiences we have as human beings through the stories of the “other”.

One of the keys to our power in retaining our humanity in these times is to return to simple and profound spaces that are intentional; this can include spaces online, in podcasts, libraries, lounges, or coffee houses where people feel heard. These spaces create an unquestionable feeling that it’s safe to be real, human, and vulnerable.

When we ask the question of how to create meaning and belonging in such challenging times, the answer may simply be that we must prioritize slowing down enough to create intentional spaces that allow time for people to be heard, seen, and valued. More than ever, technology offers us a global space to do that and I’ve seen it change lives. I encourage people to consider the possibilities of technology’s role in uniting us, while acknowledging that it can also potentially divide us further.

I’ve had the honor of hosting spaces online and in person where people can build connections, mobilize, be creative, emote, and be real. What comes out of these spaces is beyond any expectation when they are well held; this is the way towards imagining a world we know in our hearts is possible.

Leaving the intensive space here in Salzburg a different person than when I came, and knowing that many Salzburg Global Fellows have come and gone before me, has incited in me what my colleague and teacher in the field of restorative justice, Fania Davis, calls us to rise up to:

“Today, I believe there is nothing more subversive than helping to midwife a new evolutionary shift of the human species into an era where we will no longer be entranced with socioeconomic formations and ways of being and thinking that produce disconnection, domination, and devastation. Instead, we can be present upon the Earth in ways that bring healing, wholeness, and a sense of the sacred in our connection with one another and with all of creation.”

Molly Leach founded the first known restorative-justice-focused podcast in 2011, Restorative Justice on The Rise, a publicly accessible live forum and itunes/spotify stream, which uniquely records interviews with a live, interactive audience. She also has partnered with media companies such as CNN and supported HBO Documentaries in efforts to reach grassroots organizers and communities working to transform systems and lives. Molly is an essayist, researcher, educator, and visiting lecturer and presenter in the USA and worldwide.

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Thank you to Liane Rozzell for permissions to repost & distribute openly on behalf of Restorative Arlington. -Ed.

The Restorative Arlington initiative is a countywide, cross-sector effort to
bring the benefits of restorative justice practices to Arlington. Starting in late
April 2020, a dedicated group of 45 people who live, work, worship, teach,
study and volunteer in Arlington County, Virginia, began to explore how to
adopt restorative justice practices in Arlington’s schools, legal system, and
community contexts.

These Restorative Arlington working group members
met for more than 1,300 person-hours over six months, learning from
experts in both nearby communities and other parts of the country.
This strategic plan emerged from that work. In it, we outline the vision and
principles that will guide the Restorative Arlington initiative going forward.
It is the general framework for the more detailed implementation efforts
that we are starting to develop. We hope it informs and inspires you to
support and engage with the Restorative Arlington initiative.

RA Strategic Plan

Fania Davis says it openly and her words are a clarion call to all of us committed to both restorative justice and racial justice:

Just as the restorative justice community has historically failed to adopt a racial or social justice stance, few racial justice activists embrace restorative justice. Calling for a convergence of the two...(the book) urges racial justice advocates to invite more healing energies into their lives and restorative justice advocates to bring more warrior energies into theirs.

--The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice  Fania E. Davis, April 2019

As the founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise, and as a white woman of privilege, it is imperative that I name the fact that colonization has murdered, oppressed, both seen and in unseen ways--the former an area of huge oversight by White people--and destructed lives of our Black Community outrightly and relentlessly for over 400 years. While Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of slaves in Galveston, Texas, it is not, as Noliwe Rooks, Cornell Professor, says:

The pretending we've done for centuries needs to come to a halt now. The comforts we white folks have had are on the backs of hundreds of millions, and we are responsible for repairing this egregiously long-term harm.

What can anti-racist white communities do? First, we have to name the reality of the centuries of harms done. George Floyd, RIP, was not the first and sadly not the last to be slayed. The list of lives brutally slaughtered is long and impacts millions of families and communities, and the line of harm goes down generations, 400+ years to be precise. White people have to name it for what it is. And we have to do as Fania Davis emphatically invites: we have to be Warriors and Healers alike by amplifying our voices in alliance with and for Blacks and their rights.

Secondly, we must publicly acknowledge the harms we've caused as part of a white colonized system. We must see clearly our part in the harm. This begins with inner work that is radical and urgent. This means doing everything one can to think about white privilege's impacts. And the implicit and explicit biases we live day to day. It means extensively considering what it has been like to be white in America. And what differences are present as you wake up in the morning, dress for work or school for for your day, and walk out the door. What open doors are you not seeing, that were given to you due to your whiteness? What closed doors and threats do you think are a regular part of a Black man or woman or child's day, due to their Blackness? What are the hard truths about your entitlement that you may not even be aware of? What fears do Blacks have that you do not, and what are you doing to bridge that gap of understanding the visceral, marrow-bone reality of this for our Black Community?

These questions and more are critical and urgent.

Thirdly, we must do everything we can to use the privileges we've been afforded to take action. For example, as the Founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise, it is my responsibility to find ways to utilize the worldwide network we've established together, which is comprised of Black, People of Color, White, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, East Indian, and many others representing languages, heritages, stories of culture and life perspectives, and all share the same need: to be heard, seen, known, and understood at the depths of their being. And, to use this platform and network to impact policy that is unjust to the extreme. The extraordinary people in our network are why we exist. We have a responsibility to take action that is not just words or slogans, but to commit to a Warriorship of truth and advocacy that is selfless in servant leadership and Beloved Community.

We must drop the defensiveness and listen; we must take responsibility for our own honest inquiry about the past and the present. Just because you as a White are privileged doesn't mean you are being accused of being a bad person. Let's make that clear now. Defensiveness and fragility are selfish reactions to a very large and long term line of violence and what is needed is relentless humility and commitment. For those of us white folks who have been called out, self included, we have to open, not close off, and take the opportunity to recommit to action. One of the more common things I hear from white folks are things like:

• How am I as a white person responsible for racism -- I didn't hurt anyone and I have Black friends.
• I'm being accused of using my privilege, when it had nothing to do with race.
• I asked my Black friend about their experiences and they blew up at me saying they shouldn't have to educate me.

That's just three simple scenarios that seem very common and they need to be addressed bluntly by us as white folks. Where to start? Simply don't make it about you, but that you have everything to do with responsible action. Drop the tendency to put up defenses and open to the minds and hearts of Black communities who are rightfully calling us out individually and as a colonized, broken system.

Additionally and urgently, we must understand there are forces that are served by keeping humanity fighting and separated. The "otherization" of people who happen to have different colors of skin, who happen to identify in ways that are outside the restricting limits of what is called "normal" in Western society, people who pray to Gods that mostly white privileged men do not approve of ....the list goes on and on of the ways, by design, that Colonized structures and domination attempt to control humanity and its narratives. This must end now. In this time many are realizing that the systems in this country (the United States) and our world are not for the people, but for a few who monopolize profit over people and whose objectives are not aligned with democratic principles, even whilst saying they are. This applies also to the race question: who is it serving to keep us fighting and keep us outside of our common-shared humanity (while still acknowledging the violence and reality of the generational impacts and losses)?

The restorative justice movement as a whole has a responsibility in this moment to act. As individuals and as networks, as rising platforms online where verdant dialogues that are blunt and honest are occurring, relationships of trust can be built and rebuilt from a new foundation that activates collective ability to increase the potency of our actions.

The Circle is inherent in all of us--it is a place to build and re build trust, it's a place to do the very hard work of facing discomfort. I imagine that Fania's astute observation about people involved in racial justice not embracing restorative justice might be out of a rightful need to feel immediate results and changes. I can imagine that the restorative justice movement's inability to stand in full for racial justice might be due to our over-arching urgent need to deconstruct our own worldviews that are embedded in our DNA and systems alike--and are white, colonized, and destruction-based to anyone or anything that does not serve its means and ends.

So today on this Juneteenth in one of the most difficult years possibly experienced on this planet, we get to see full force what Thomas Merton called the "Unspeakable": the violence and murder, the broken systems, the racism and injustice directed at Blacks and at People of Color, the slaying of our meek, the targeting of young Black Men and the list goes on. We face life or death in this moment--both quite literally and symbolically as a planet. We have a choice to stand up and rise. We have a choice as restorative justice practitioners to sharpen our swords of truth while equally holding healing spaces of potency for the ability they have to cultivate seen-ness, heard-ness, and to allow true action to result.

Healing does not start outwardly, it starts with individuals and is an inner process that deeply impacts capacity to work outwardly. When we who happen to be white act with fragility, don't linger on that, learn from it, and go deeper inside yourself to identify the spirit of life within you--whether that's spiritually oriented or a tone of deep and trusted guidance, tune into that part of yourself that links to what might be called the Great Mystery--the larger cosmological context that is indeed mirrored in each and every one of us. Go from Fragility to Responsibility.

In 2017 I was in Oakland for the NACRJ Conference, and Fania closed the 4-day event with an incredibly critical invitation, which I will paraphrase from memory (and hopefully accurately), inviting "white community of practitioners in the field to find their roots, their identities, and bring those forth". That remark was critical and I to this day wonder how many people took it seriously. But here we are today, in 2020, and the question arises, how can we work as allies and accomplices for anti-racism unless we reach deeply within our souls to explore the divine perspectives that inform us, that call on us to heal ourselves, love ourselves, and to bring forth the natural healing that arises from our own wholeness and presence, even as it stumbles through the many gates of initiation and loss? Can we hold the violence and destruction, let is pass through us without averting for a moment? Can we show up as RJ practitioners and white folks with roots that extend, like Bamboo, laterally and unified, and that can bend with hardship and return to support the whole?

Becoming a Healer means, as Frankl said, "to endure burning". Joseph Campbell, himself a white person, gave us the gift of the mythological aspects of the Hero's Journey, and becoming the healer through the course of blunt willingness to be humbled on this journey. This is the medicine of planting seeds of potent action.

Restorative justice programs are offering Impact Circles and spaces for critical discussions on white privilege and to hear the urgent concerns and needs of our Black, Indigenous and POC communities. One such program is Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth which Fania Davis was co-founder, and another, Talking Peace. Restorative Empowerment for Youth are hosting youth-led online Impact Circles. Many more are occurring. Fania was and is right, we have to unify to create the balance that is needed to move forward as an empowered, humble, activated movement. We can't bridge the divide she points out without getting brutally honest and that starts with Circles that are held with conditions that cultivate truth telling and respect. They are Circles that are small to ensure voice and choice. They expand and ripple out and empower Blacks and Whites alike, when the hard work of acknowledgment and self inquiry is happening. This is the ground of unified action towards lasting change. This is the ground of dismantling sick, colonized systems once and for all, and for both visioning in, and potently enacting the world we wish to live in that honors the lives of all equally in every seen and unseen form imaginable.

I'm rolling up my sleeves. I hope that you are too.

-Molly Rowan Leach

Founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise. A People's Platform for Dialogue and Resources, Education and Connection, since 2011.

Restorative Justice on The Rise is grateful to its global community of speakers, faculty, practitioners, participants and advocates. We thought you might like to see a one-page synopsis of our public, free offerings along with the tuition or fee-based education and consults we've put in place to offset the podcast and free aspects of our service to advocacy, movement building, dialogue, and connection.

READ ONE PAGE HIGHLIGHTS REPORT:

PDF: 2019 Programs & Offering Highlights

La Justicia Restaurativa en The Rise está agradecida a su comunidad global de oradores, profesores, profesionales, participantes y defensores. Pensamos que le gustaría ver una sinopsis de una página de nuestras ofertas públicas y gratuitas, junto con la matrícula o la educación basada en tarifas, y consultas que hemos puesto en marcha para compensar el podcast y los aspectos gratuitos de nuestro servicio a la promoción, la construcción de movimientos, el diálogo y las consultas que hemos puesto en marcha para compensar el podcast y los aspectos gratuitos de nuestro servicio a la promoción, la construcción del movimiento, el diálogo y Conexión.

Restorative Justice on The Rise est reconnaissante à sa communauté mondiale de conférenciers, de professeurs, de praticiens, de participants et de défenseurs. Nous avons pensé que vous aimeriez voir un résumé d'une page de nos offres publiques, gratuites ainsi que les frais de scolarité ou d'éducation basée sur les frais et les consultations que nous avons mis en place pour compenser le podcast et les aspects gratuits de notre service à la défense, la construction de mouvements, le dialogue, et Connexion.

A survey of 500 Defendants about Restorative Justice: Their Awareness of and Interest in participating in Restorative Justice

Abstract

This 2018 study examines defendant awareness about restorative justice and defendant interest in participating in restorative conversations with victims of their crimes. Using a non probability convenience sample of individuals sentenced to prison and individuals serving probation, 500 individuals who identified as defendants in criminal cases were asked to complete a 4 question survey about their awareness of Restorative Justice (RJ) and their personal interest in participating in RJ if it was available in their criminal case. The results of the survey are shared publicly in the hopes it will inspire further study by researchers within both academic and prison institutions. Our hope is that this survey will bring increased attention to the needs of victims and the accountability that restorative justice and the Florida criminal justice system can invite, support, and offer to offenders as a means to repair and prevent reoccurring harm. This study was funded by the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding (RPCP) and conducted in 2018 and authored by Gretchen Casey, RPCP Director of Restorative Justice Outreach and Training.

Questions and inquiries can be emailed to RPCP here