After a death, a time for restorative justice?

Restorative justice consists of a series of meetings between both parties, victim and offender. The goal is for the two parties to come up with a solution that hold offenders accountable to victims. Baliga says the practice can precede the court system, or even replace it altogether.

Much of the time, restorative justice is offered as an alternative to the traditional justice system for non-violent or misdemeanor offenses. But in 2010, Baliga helped facilitate a restorative justice approach in a Florida murder case where a young man named Conor McBride was convicted of shooting and killing his fiancee, Ann Grosmaire after a prolonged argument. The Grosmaire family, who was close with Conor, met with the McBride family in the wake of the crime to come up with a fitting sentence for Conor.

Youth Radio reporter Sayre Quevedo sat down with Baliga at her office in Oakland, California to discuss the McBride case and the ways restorative justice could change the way we sentence juveniles in this country.

YR: You use this phrase, “being held accountable to victims” when you talk about restorative justice. What does that look like?

SB: So, what if somebody burglarizes somebody else’s home and instead of them going to juvenile hall or going to prison what would it look like if they met with the person they burglarized, listened to that person define the way that they were harmed and try come up with a plan to do right by that person? What if they had support from their community to complete that plan and the victim had community support to put their life back together after a crime? To me, that’s an ideal restorative justice scenario.

YR: In that example you use burglary, but the McBride case involved murder. Do you think restorative justice works across the board, for all crimes?

SB: I think restorative justice works wherever the parties are willing to do it. So in the McBride case, Ann’s parents wanted restorative justice from the get-go. I think when victims are willing to engage and the people who have done harm are willing to engage you can do it with every crime. I think it needs to be properly facilitated by people who are super well-trained. I wouldn’t run out and do these with domestic violence cases or hate crimes unless you are cross-trained in both facilitating dialogue in crimes of domestic violence and hate crimes. But with proper training I think we can use restorative justice early on in any crime.

YR: Are there ways that the current justice system succeeds in ways that the restorative justice system can’t?

SB: We like to work with cases where the young person takes responsibility. There are kids whose cases have been referred to our program in the past where they’ve claimed they’re innocent, and a whole bunch of witnesses say they’re innocent. You get the wrong kid sometimes. We’re not going to use the restorative justice process to sort that out. You need a lawyer to tell the court that this person didn’t do it. We’re not investigators in restorative justice. So, that is one scenario in which we always need courts and finders of facts.

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