Yesterday the NY Times published an editorial recommending the use of restorative justice as one approach to handling sexual assault and other types of misconduct at universities. See the editorial here.
I think there can be great advantages to using restorative justice processes in a variety of settings. My concern is that we have seen that universities don’t have a great track record in terms of dealing with sexual assaults on campus (in fairness, few institutions in our society do have a great track record).
I would be concerned that restorative justice not be adopted as another way to avoid dealing with sexual assault. There are also a number of concerns about using restorative justice processes in any kind of sexual assault case (on campus or off). When restorative justice is more widely used, it is often specifically not used in these types of cases. This is due, in large part, to concerns that victims won’t be adequately protected in such a process.
It is good to see, however, that restorative justice is getting such high profile consideration.
I agree with your position that restorative justice may not be the appropriate way of handling campus sexual assault cases, but I believe that it has less to do with victim safety during the process and more to do with institutions not treating and handling the victims or attackers in the “right” way. On school campuses, victims may see their attacker everywhere and not feel any sense of justice because there were/are no repercussions for the attack. Many of the proceedings are not publicized (or if they are then institutions do not do an adequate job of alerting the community) and what student would openly admit to committing a sexual assault. This seems to bring the notion of repairing the community to a halt since there could be backlash to both victim and attacker. The institutions seemed to be faced with two options: not expelling the student and showing a disregard to victim’s feelings and safety, or expelling the student, which could lead to a potential lawsuit. This puts the institution between a rock and a hard place since it wants to foster a safe environment for students, but the process is severely flawed in many regards.
I do agree with the editorial that the restorative justice process could lead to recidivism and be cathartic for both parties. From looking through a restorative justice website (http://www.restorativejustice.org/university-classroom/01introduction), there is the acknowledgement that there is a process to “restoring” both parties to a whole person again. But I believe there needs to be major institutional changes in order to build a campus culture that is prepared and equipped with handling sexual assault. This will definitely include working with law enforcement and properly educating students on what to do when they see or learn someone has been sexually assaulted. Overall, I agree with your statement that sexual assault should not be a topic avoided by campuses (or in general) and restorative justice seems to be a better theory to aspire to than a realistic method of decreasing campus assaults.