The power of restorative justice

00:00 05:48

David Shipley has narrated this article for you to listen to.

In a week when the Chief Inspector of Prisons published an Urgent Notification detailing the horrors of HMP Wandsworth, I found myself revisiting memories of being jailed there for the crime of fraud. Clanging doors, rattling chains, men screaming at night in anguish or despair or because their cellmate was assaulting them. No help coming. Emergencies unattended for far too long, and people dead as a result. No purpose, no hope, not even the possibility of redemption. Wandsworth is a miserable prison, one which does as much as possible to brutalise, punish and hurt those it jails, and nothing to heal or change them for the better.

My mind full of memories of pain, I then travelled to Nottingham to see James Graham’s new play, Punch, an adaptation of Jacob Dunne’s memoir, Right From Wrong. Aged 19, Jacob threw a single punch at a stranger, James Hodgkinson. James fell to the ground, struck his head and died in hospital nine days later.

Jacob went to prison for manslaughter. In that environment, surrounded by drugs and angry young men, where staff and other prisoners ‘just reinforced… negative feelings’, he might have continued down the path of crime after release. But something changed; Jacob is now a married father of two who campaigns for healthier cultures in and outside of prison. He credits restorative justice with changing the direction of his life. This process offers victims the opportunity to contact the person responsible, with the intent of asking them questions and expressing the harm caused.

Jacob was put in touch with James Hodgkinson’s parents, David and Joan, via Remedi, a restorative justice organisation. They eventually met, and ultimately Jacob worked with Joan to raise awareness of the risks of throwing even one punch.