Until We Reckon: Violence, Incarceration, and the Road to Repair

In this passionate plea for change, Sered, founder and director of Common Justice, argues for an alternative to punitive jailing to address violent crime and its effects on victims, perpetrators, and communities. In contrast to the approach of punitive incarceration, which, in Sered’s view, decreases safety, healing, and recidivism rates, Sered’s program focuses on restorative justice, an alternative centered on accountability: acknowledging responsibility for one’s actions, acknowledging the impact of one’s actions on others, expressing genuine remorse, taking actions to repair the harm (when feasible) as guided by the victims, and no longer committing similar harm. She methodically refutes many tenets of the “deterrence theory,” which relies on incarceration to prevent crime, noting the influence of structural racism, and points out that restorative justice has been shown in studies of the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. to reduce “recidivism rates by as much as 44 percent.” The book is at its strongest and most convincing when Sered provides real-life stories of restorative justice, as when the perpetrator of a mugging teaches his victim self-defense techniques that allow him to overcome the fear of walking in public the mugging had sparked. This proposal to change the way American society deals with violent crime will expand readers’ horizons. [em](Mar.) [/em]