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THE RED FEATHER JOURNALof POSTMODERN CRIMINOLOGYAn International Journal |
by Hal Pepinsky, Criminal Justice, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2000
I recently sat among several hundred people hearing one of the globally prominent thinkers and practitioners of restorative justice, Howard Zehr (1990), give a keynote address to several hundred Iowans at a state corrections department sponsored conference on restorative justice, led by those who were beginning to organize family group conferencing in Des Moines and around the state. Howard quoted from psychiatrist' James Gilligan's study of violent men (1996: 18):
...the motives and goals that underlie crime are the same as those that underlie
punishment--namely, the pursuit of what the violent person considers "justice."
Zehr inspired me to look back at Gilligan's book. Gilligan is trying to explain the violence of he saw in his clients when he was medical director of the Massachusetts state hospital for the criminally insane (Bridgewater of "Titticut Follies" notoriety), and then as state mental health director. Gilligan finds that all violence is rooted in shame (1996: 55):
Violence "speaks" of an intolerable condition of human shame and rage, a
blinding rage that speaks through the body.
What is "shame"? (J. Gilligan, 1996: 47):
...the absence or deficiency of self-love is shame; its opposite is pride, by which I
mean a healthy sense of self-esteem; self-respect; and self-love.
Shame has a logic (p. 64):
We all know that shame motivates the wish for concealment, the wish not to be
seen; the word itself comes from Old Germanic roots meaning to clothe or cover
oneself. Darwin pointed out that "under a keen sense of shame there is a strong
desire for concealment....An ashamed person can hardly endure to meet the gaze
of those present.
I have developed a special interest in violence against children. My operating definition of child abuse is making a child keep secret what s/he does with you. More than keeping the activity private, abuse in this sense implies pressure not to talk about the activity even to friends and other relatives. Acknowledged survivors of incest and other childhood violence seem to agree with therapists like Judith Herman (1992), that having to keep pain and fear secret to protect the violator produces shame and deepens trauma. Shame itself keeps pain, fear, and anger secret--leading to repression of the experience of betrayal of trust (Miller, 1990 [1983]). Concealment produces shame, which becomes a perpetuation of concealment.
I share the desire of advocates of restorative justice and of reintegrative shaming to find ways to weave people we identify as victims and offenders into communities, rather than remaining isolated and separated from others. In all my attempts to understand what builds community, I see nothing more fundamental to community, almost by definition, than trust. In turn, nothing is more fundamental to trust than honesty and open sharing of information and feelings. The concealment that produces and is perpetuated by shame is by definition failure of honesty and openness, and therefore, by definition as well, the root destruction of community.
A paradox is presented. In a truly violent world, we all conceal things from one another. True community requires honesty, and honesty requires that we honestly acknowledge that we conceal things out of shame. In all honesty, we have to be able to be honest about concealing shame without having to reveal shame.
I have a friend with a child who has long been suicidal. The child has told me that my friend traumatized the child into suicidal behavior. The child does not want me to talk to my friend about it. Whitfield (1995) is among the more widely recognized authorities on healing from incest to recommend that the victim NOT confront the parent or other perpetrator at least until s/he is strong enough to expect the perpetrator to renew shaming the victim. "You deserved it." "You asked for it." "You're so dumb and ugly. You're just lucky to have me around."
I continue to have loving relations with my friend without betraying the child's secret. It is my hope and belief that by letting shame reveal itself rather than by confronting it and trying to force it into the open, shame can gradually give way to openness and community. This goes as well for those who talk about having the urge to hurt others. Acknowledged survivors of child abuse have taught me, and therapists concurred, that if you have shared concern that you will repeat your abuser's violence, your having shared the concern with someone, anyone, is the best guarantee we have that you will not do it.
For all concerned, therefore, the challenge of building community in the wake of violence is to encourage people, including both victims and offenders, to LET GO of shame (Potter-Efron and Potter-Efron, 1989). Zehr suggested in his Iowa talk that this is what John Braithwaite (1989) meant by the "reintegrative" part of "reintegrative shaming," the process by which Braithwaite supposed that the Japanese usher offenders back into a relatively crime-free society. Still, "shaming" is an unfortunate choice of words. "Shaming" connotes that you are creating feelings in offenders that are not already there. Inasmuch as shame is the feeling of wanting to hide from others, what is to be gained by trying to make offenders feel that way more than they already do?
Perhaps the most revolutionary element of restorative justice as envisioned and practiced by Zehr (1990) and others is that it substitutes focus on harm done for focus on wrong done. Ideally in conferencing or in victim offender reconciliation programs inspired by the "vision" known as "restorative justice," you are there to share recognition of the pain and fear an "offense" has caused, and respond. Another word for response purely to pain and fear in one's companions (or whatever feelings are at hand) is "empathy." Empathy, rather than remorse, on one hand is what most helps a victim become a safe survivor, and on the other what gives us pause--what stops and redirects us--when we are hurting others (McKendy, 1999; Pepinsky, 1998). You empathize when your own problems give way and are interrupted by the problems of others.
The time you take out, as in being a facilitator of a victim-offender conference, is its own recognition of the importance of the harm done. If you are really moved by the harm done, it comes naturally to try to draw out first and foremost what pain and fear the victim is feeling as s/he tells it--not as you suppose it.
You are there because the crime has had consequences. To "give" additional consequences to show how condemnatory and righteous you can be only takes attention away from the consequences at hand. As Navajo recognize in the operation of their peacemaking court, the primary responsibility of every member of a court, including complainant and those complained against, is to listen to others and declare how s/he will honor others' feelings, not to lecture others on what they should or should not do (Yazzie, 1998; Zion, 1998). It is enough evidence of your concern for the harm done that you show up at the meeting to discuss it. Any more attention to how to assign blame only distracts from addressing the harm. It is an honest recognition of harm done to tell someone you are angry s/he caused it. It is a narcissistic gratuity to presume to lecture people on how ashamed they should be too, let alone to punishing them to show you care about the harm.
Basically, it only reinforces shame rather than liberating people from it, to try to teach them lessons, to try to make them feel badly about what they have done, to condemn them and impose consequences. I fear that in conferencing, victim offender reconciliation, circles and the like convened on account of crime, "shaming" has become a pretext for reinforcing shame, which destroys rather than builds community in the wake of violence. It is important that we recognize shame, but that we not be made to feel it.
REFERENCES
Braithwaite, John. 1989. Crime, Shame, and Reintegration. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gilligan, James. 1996. Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes. New York:
Grosset/Putnam.
Herman, Judith L. 1992. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From
Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books.
McKendy, John. 1999. "Dialogue and the Risk of Responsibility." Humanity and Society,
23, 3, 238-53.
Miller, Alice. 1990 [German edn. 1983]. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in
Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. New York: Noonday.
Pepinsky, Hal. 1998. "Empathy Works, Obedience Doesn't." Criminal Justice Policy
Review, 9, 2, 141-67.
Potter-Efron, Ronald, and Patricia Potter-Efron. 1989. Letting Go of Shame:
Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life. Center City, MN: Hazelden.
Whitfield, Charles L. 1995. Memory and Abuse: Remembering and Healing the
Effects of Trauma. Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications.
Yazzie, Robert. 1998. "Navajo Peacemaking: Implications for Adjudication-Based
Systems of Justice." Contemporary Justice Review, 1, 1, 123-31.
Zehr, Howard J. 1990. Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice.
Scottsdale, Pa.: Herald Press.
Zion, James W. 1998. "The Use of Custom and Legal Tradition in the Modern
Justice Setting." Contemporary Justice Review, 1, 1, 133-48.
* Many thanks to Andrew Hund and Whitney Pope for feedback on earlier drafts.