What is Restorative Justice?

Creature of Secret Sorrows Seeks the Kind of Justice that Heals the Soul

The photo above is of Peter, a man who escaped slavery (there are actually three versions of this photo taken at different times and now retained in the Smithsonian collection). The scars on his back are from the whippings he endured at the hands of his master. This photo was used by abolitionists to demonstrate the treatment of enslaved people.

Retributive Justice

Our country rules by a system of retributive justice: you commit a crime, you pay the time. Or with your life in some cases. The victims are rarely compensated in any way. And, it turns out, some people are allowed to live above the law and commit heinous crimes without any justice rendered. Not only that, in some cases, the law itself is criminal and accepted throughout the land.

When the Law is Criminal

Here are a few examples of widely accepted law and public policy:

1. Colonization: Forced domination over territory and people for the purpose of exploiting resources and lands for profit and gain. This also involved dehumanization of the people whose land they were taking over and included displacement and genocide.
2. Chattel slavery: A system that dehumanized people and turned them into property to be traded, bought, and sold, and used for free labor. The great wealth of the United States was built on the backs of free labor and that is why the South seceded from the US, because they did not want to change their economic structure and the bedrock of their wealth. That wealth has been passed down through the generations.
3. Jim Crow Laws: After President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Southern sympathizer Andrew Johnson took office, Reconstruction efforts were abandoned: Union troops, there to ensure peace and safety for formerly enslaved people, were withdrawn, and land promised to them was returned to plantation owners under an amnesty program established by President Johnson. Then, laws were passed that supposedly created a “separate but equal environment.” What it created instead was the opposite: social and economic inequality, lynchings, and race massacres.
4. Housing Projects and the Interstate Highway Systems of the 1950s: Some systemic racism may have seemed helpful on the surface, like creating affordable housing. But the housing projects built from the 1950s through the 1980s had a more nefarious purpose. Containment. It worked in conjunction with something called red-lining where Black families were steered away from certain neighborhoods and directed toward others. And then the highways were built, purposely splitting cities into Black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. All government sanctioned. Today, some cities are spending millions moving the highways to fix this systemic issue, including Syracuse, New York, where we used to live and where my husband grew up.

What Kind of Justice Will Right These Transgressions?

No one can go back and do time for the crimes committed against BIPOC people in this country. That kind of retribution cannot resolve the intergenerational trauma, the denial of intergenerational wealth, and the resetting of the clock back to start where BIPOC people are standing on the same level playing field as Euro-Americans. That’s perhaps where reparations come into play in terms of social and economic parity.

Restorative Justice

But there is another kind of justice that is often spoken about these days called restorative justice. It is not a “do the crime, pay the time” system of justice, but is more about acknowledgment and reconciliation. It’s about re-humanizing and mourning the victims of accepted laws and systems and the actions of individuals who were acting on societal beliefs about the myth of inferiority of BIPOC. It’s an accountability and a concerted effort to decolonize our systems, our institutions, and our thinking. There was never any group of people that were supreme over others. All people on earth had organized civilizations, language, culture, art, music, science, religion, mathematics, and more. It’s about readjusting the social fabric of society so that we live fairly and can enjoy and celebrate the quilt of many colors this country represents. Most of all, it’s about healing from past trauma (the theme of many of the Cadence books) and past transgressions. And while it’s about accountability and acknowledging the truth, it’s not about casting blame. There’s recognition and healing for the descendants of those who perpetrated these crimes against humanity, too. Restorative justice is the path to peace.

Creature of Secret Sorrows

That’s what Creature of Secret Sorrows is about. The past comes calling for justice. In this case, it comes in the form of a mythical monster. This book is terrifying on so many levels: a heinous crime, the forced stripping of identity, intergenerational abuse and trauma, and a compelling mystery to solve. But, I promise, you’ll find healing and comfort, too.