Too often when people enter into conflict with an eye on how to resolve it, manage it or transform it, they loose sight of the people involved and the desired end. Too often justice and peace serve as an ideal or some distant shore. We have not yet learned enough about how these ends can also be the means of restorative justice and peacebuilding. Drawing on the imaginations of some leading peace and restorative justice practitioners, this book identifies components of a justpeace imagination. This imagination is the basis of justpeace ethics, where the end goal is touched with each step. This simple little book is designed to help those struggling with how to respond to conflict and violence in an ethical and transformative way. It offers practical examples of how analysis, intervention and evaluation of peacebuilding and restorative justice can be rooted in imagination of justpeace ethics.

Description: While many in the criminal justice system would agree that the present punitive system of crime control is ineffective, unjust, and malevolent, there is little enthusiasm for talk about reforming the system or for a reexamination of its fundamental premises. In Justice as Sanctuary, noted Dutch criminologist Herman Bianchi details a new approach to crime control, one that promises to reanimate debate and initiate real change. He explores the cultural and religious roots of the current punitive system in search of new perspectives that can help create a more just and effective one. In the ancient Hebrew notion of tsedeka ("justice" or "righteousness"), Bianchi finds the inspiration for a new model of crime control based on conflict resolution rather than punishment. Because so many feel alienated from the criminal justice system, he argues for new procedures that will enable people to experience law as supportive of their lives and their social interactions. To complement the current punitive system, Bianchi proposes a system that provides victims and offenders a chance to resolve their conflicts and offers them the opportunity to reach non-punitive systems. By incorporating the concept of liability, Bianchi's model returns to offenders the responsibility for their acts while providing an active legal role for the victims of crime. It adapts structures and models from civil and labor law for conflict resolution of nonviolent crimes, and in the case of violent crimes, and in the case of violent crimes, proposes the creation of special "sanctuaries" that would protect the public while making it possible to effect true justice. Startling in its implications, Bianchi's system is not a utopian dream, but a carefully considered set of proposals that could be acted upon today. About the Contributor(s): Herman Bianchi was former Professor of Criminology and former Dean of the Law School of the Free University of Amsterdam.

Description: People too often enter into conflict with an eye on how to resolve, manage, or transform it, thereby losing sight of the people involved and the end desired. Justice and peace too often serve as abstract ideals or distant shores. We have not yet learned enough about how these ends can also be the means of conflict resolution. Drawing on the imaginations of some leading peace and restorative justice practitioners, Justpeace Ethics identifies components of a justpeace imagination--the basis of an alternative ethics, where the end is touched with each step. In this simple companion to justpeace ethics, Jarem Sawatsky helps those struggling with how to respond to conflict and violence in both just and peaceful ways. He offers practical examples of how analysis, intervention, and evaluation can be rooted in a justpeace imagination. Endorsements: With wisdom and sensitivity, Justpeace Ethics explores how justice and peace become one. There is genius in the way it holds together diverging values: interconnectedness and individual uniqueness, immediate care and long-term thinking, change and humility, needs-focused action and nonviolence, empowerment and responsibility. In such an ethic, life is sacred, relationships are central, and justice is beautiful. A must read for those who long for a better world. - John Derksen Conflict Resolution Studies Menno Simons College Winnipeg, Canada This book is an enormously valuable contribution to thinking about doing justice and building peace. . . . Justpeace Ethics provides an immensely practical guide to those seeking to build peace and justice. At the same time, it is anything but a simple 'how to' book. Rather, the patient reader is rewarded with an account of the values of restorative justice and peacebuilding that is deeply sophisticated, philosophically profound, and rooted in awareness of the complexity of thinking and acting ethically. -Professor Gerry Johnstone, author of Restorative Justice: Ideas, Values, Debates This book provides a fresh and provocative perspective on the intersection of restorative justice and conflict transformation. . . . This is a must-read for conflict resolution academics and practitioners. -Neil Funk-Unrau, Conflict Resolution Studies, Menno Simons College, Canadian Mennonite University About the Contributor(s): Jarem Sawatsky is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies, Canadian Mennonite University.

What is healing justice? Who practices it? What does it look like? In this groundbreaking international comparative study on healing justice, Jarem Sawatsky examines traditional communities including Hollow Water - an Aboriginal and Metis community in Canada renowned for their holistic healing work in the face of 80 per cent sexual abuse rates; the Iona Community - a dispersed Christian ecumenical community in Scotland known for their work towards peace, healing and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship; and Plum Village - a Vietnamese initiated Buddhist community in southern France, and home to Nobel Peace Prize nominated author, Thich Nhat Hanh. These case studies record a search for the kind of social, structural, and spiritual relationships necessary to sustain a healing view of justice. Through comparing cases, Sawatsky identifies the common patterns, themes, and imagination which these communities share. These commonalities among those that practice healing justice are then examined for their implications for wider society, particularly for restorative justice and criminal justice. This innovative book is accessible to those new to the topic, while at the same time being beneficial to experienced researchers, and will appeal internationally to practitioners, students, and anyone interested in restorative justice, law, peace building, and religious studies.