This paper will analyze the potential for restorative justice for Rubin Carter as depicted in the film, The Hurricane. Drawing on Howard Zehr’s (2002) guiding questions, I believe a solution can be constructed for the harms done to Carter by the justice system.
Who has been hurt? The victim is Rubin Carter, an African-American man falsely convicted and imprisoned for the 1964 murder of three white patrons at a bar. The police harmed Carter by basing their investigation on racial prejudice and coerced false witness statements. The prosecution/courts harmed Carter when the case was "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure” (Jewison, 2008). The harm created by retributive justice resulted in Carter’s wrongful conviction and incarceration. Carter was a prominent boxer and a hero to many African-Americans. In turn, his wrongful conviction harmed the African-American community at large.
What are their needs? Owing to the
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severity of his suffering, Carter needs reparation back to his date of arrest. Whatever money he receives should be tax-free at the State level to ensure that the State does not benefit from its mistake. Carter needs funding for whatever it takes for him to heal, recognizing that the healing process will take place over many years. Carter needs a personal counselor or caseworker to work with him to plan his reintegration into society. Unquestionably, these decisions would only be made if Carter voluntarily agrees to them. “Victims are empowered by maximizing their input and participation in determining needs and outcomes” (Zehr, 2002, p. 67). Whose obligations are these? The State has the duty to fulfill Carter’s needs. Blame is not a principal concern here. Nevertheless, it appears clear that the social contract between the community and its people expects that government, as the representative of the whole community, offer a safeguard to not wrongly convict an innocent person. Notwithstanding societies duty to support crime victims, it also has an obligation to ensure a fair, unbiased judicial system. In Carter’s situation, the State has an obligation to correct the situation produced when he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to life. Who has a stake in this situation? Those at stake include Carter, his family members, police, the courts, service agency representatives, members of the neighborhood where Carter is to be released, and possibly media representatives (their interference can sometimes make or break a successful reintegration). What is the appropriate process to involve stakeholders in an effort to put things right? Carter and the other stakeholders should brainstorm Carter’s needs and propose solutions in a plan of action for Carter’s assimilation back into society. This plan would be presented to the stakeholders where a dialog would follow. The plan would be most successful if all stakeholders agree. Once the mistake was acknowledged and Carter was released, his damaged life needs to be regained.
Carter needs exceptional assistance to become a productive member of the community. State funds will aid with his reintegration into life outside of prison. Success outside of prison will be challenging, especially due to his notoriety. The community around him needs to share in the assimilation process through an assurance of its service and time. The benefit of restorative justice applied to Carter is that there is no energy wasted on condemning those working in the judicial system. Moreover, the key to success in using restorative justice for Carter is the State’s guarantee to satisfy Carter’s needs. Restorative justice for Carter is also the correct thing to do for the community. It can help restore faith in the judicial system. Restorative justice requires moral leadership with the resolve to do the right thing—a difficult proposition based our judicial history—but a worthy
goal.
In James S. Hirsch’s book about Rubin "Hurricane" Cater, Hurricane, the author describes how Carter was wrongfully imprisoned and how he managed to become free. Hirsch tells about the nearly impossible battle for Carter and his friend John Artis for freedom and justice. Both, Carter and Artis, were convicted of a triple homicide, and both were innocent.
The hypocrisy and double standard that allowed whites to bring harm to blacks without fear of any repercussions had existed for years before the murder Tyson wrote about occurred in May of 1970 (Tyson 2004, 1). Lynching of black men was common place in the south as Billie Holiday sang her song “Strange Fruit” and the eyes of justice looked the other way. On the other side of the coin, justice was brought swiftly to those blacks who stepped out of line and brought harm to the white race. Take for instance Nate Turner, the slave who led a rebellion against whites. Even the Teel’s brought their own form of justice to Henry Marrow because he “said something” to one of their white wives (1).
There is no doubt in the minds of many people who are familiar with the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter story that he, and the man who was convicted for murder with him, John Artis, are innocent of those crimes. While no one knows for sure who is guilty of the crime, but the one thing that is for certain is that Carter and Artis were victims of racial bias from many people who would see them in jail. This story is truly a tragic one of a promising career, and of a life that was spoiled by prejudice and one that reviles some of the ways in which, society's present legal system can fail to ensure the right of justice for people in our society.
Throughout this paper, criticisms and praises will be mentioned in the borrowing of these ingenious practices, along with arriving to a conclusion of whether we are ready to deal with offenders in the restorative justice aspect. This is an important issue because, with a newly arrived program, we need to realize whether or not we are rushing into something that the criminal justice system is not ready for and also whether they are effective.
When envisioning a prison, one often conceptualizes a grisly scene of hardened rapists and murderers wandering aimlessly down the darkened halls of Alcatraz, as opposed to a pleasant facility catering to the needs of troubled souls. Prisons have long been a source of punishment for inmates in America and the debate continues as to whether or not an overhaul of the US prison system should occur. Such an overhaul would readjust the focuses of prison to rehabilitation and incarceration of inmates instead of the current focuses of punishment and incarceration. Altering the goal of the entire state and federal prison system for the purpose of rehabilitation is an unrealistic objective, however. Rehabilitation should not be the main purpose of prison because there are outlying factors that negatively affect the success of rehabilitation programs and such programs would be too costly for prisons currently struggling to accommodate additional inmate needs.
As Elie Wiesel once stated, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (“Elie Wiesel Quote”). Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which discusses criminal justice and its role in mass incarceration, promotes a similar idea regarding silence when America’s racial caste system needs to be ended; however, Alexander promotes times when silence would actually be better for “the tormented.” The role of silence and lack of silence in the criminal justice system both contribute to wrongly accused individuals and growing populations behind bars.
Question 1. Both Thomas Mathiesen and Stanley Cohen argue that alternative criminal justice responses that were presented after the 1970s were not real alternatives (Tabibi, 2015a). The ‘alternatives’ which are being questioned are community justice alternatives generally, and Restorative Justice specifically. The argument here is that Restorative Justice cannot be a real alternative because it is itself finished and is based on the premises of the old system (Mathiesen, 1974). Moreover, Restorative Justice is not an alternative, as it has not solved the issues surrounding the penal system (Tabibi, 2015a). Cohen (1985) supports this sentiment, and suggests that community based punishment alternatives have actually led to a widening and expansion
Convicts rarely serve their entire sentences in prison (Ross and Richards, 146). To alleviate the costs of imprisonment on taxpayers and lessen the staggering populations of prisons across America, it is simply prudent to let inmates out on parole. Unfortunately, the parole system is imperfect and often leads to many ex-convicts recidivating. With the various trials and challenges that ex-convicts are bound to face when rejoining society after prison, Ross and Richards provide valuable lessons in their book of how a convict might survive beyond bars.
A growing number of probation officers, judges, prosecutors as well as other juvenile professionals are advocating for a juvenile justice system which is greatly based on restorative justice. These groups of people have been frustrated by the policy uncertainty between retribution and treatment as well as unrealistic and unclear public expectations. As a primary mission, the balanced approach or policy allows juvenile justice systems together with its agencies to improve in their capacity of protecting the community and ensuring accountability of the system and the offenders . It enables the youths to become productive and competent citizens. This guiding philosophical framework for this policy is restorative justice as it promotes the maximum involvement of the community, victim, and the offender in the justice process. Restorative justice also presents a viable alternative to sanctions as well as interventions that are based on traditional or retributive treatment assumptions. In the policy proposal for restorative justice, the balanced approach mission assists juvenile justice system in becoming more responsive to the needs of the community, victims, and the offenders . Therefore, this paper considers how restorative justice reduces referrals of juveniles to criminal and juvenile justice systems and gives a proposal on the implementation of restorative justice in the community together with a number of recommendations. For instance, preliminary research reveals that application of restorative justice in schools significantly reduces school expulsions, suspensions, and referrals to the criminal justice systems. Restorative justice programs are an alternative for zero-tolerance policies for juveniles or youths .
Welch, Kelly. 2007. “Black Criminal Stereotypes and Racial Profiling.” Journal of Contemporary Justice 23(3): 276-288 also talks about the discrimination within the courtroom, in the court it has been shown that the prosecutors when fighting a case against the defendant who’s client is Black use their race as an argument to win the case. They try to show how Black people are prone to be violent due to racial factors and therefore should be sentenced harshly. Given the history, unfortunately this argument sets in well and therefore leads to sentencing and prison time for the Black
For much of the twentieth century, punishment and crime have portrayed some of the most powerful signs of the racial divide in the United States. Marginalized and the poor remains the most biased against the criminal justice scheme (Barak, 2010). Throughout the Americas. racial minorities were tried in white courtrooms by white juries. Class and race are challenging.
While other countries use different methods of incarceration-deterrence, incapacitation, and retribution-the United States uses the prison system of rehabilitation. This system of rehabilitation treats every prisoner as an equal that is meant to get the exact...
Sung, L. G.-e. (2011). Rethinking Corrections: Rehabilitation, Reentry, and Reintegration. Thousand Oaks : SAGE Publications.
This, however, is not the case in today’s judicial system. Justice is not blind, as our forefathers had intended it to be. According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, on the racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system, African Americans are incarcerated in state prison at 6 times the rate of Caucasian Americans, and were sentenced to death at 5 times the rate. Furthermore, African Americans have an average sentence length of 40 months, compared to Caucasians average sentence length of 37 months. Those figures begin to widen exponentially as socioeconomic class is brought into the
As the purpose of restorative justice is to mend the very relationship between the victim, offender, and society, communities that embrace restorative justice foster an awareness on how the act has harmed others. Braithwaite (1989) notes that by rejecting only the criminal act and not the offender, restorative justice allows for a closer empathetic relationship between the offender, victims, and community. By acknowledging the intrinsic worth of the offender and their ability to contribute back to the community, restorative justice shows how all individuals are capable of being useful despite criminal acts previous. This encourages offenders to safely reintegrate into society, as they are encouraged to rejoin and find rapport with the community through their emotions and