Pathways for LIFE

Restorative Justice sounds soft on crime if you ask the people who believe giving adults in custody lengthy sentences away from society is the answer to crime. Whats tougher for those who create harm for others is to face their victims, i.e. hear from them about the harms they experienced. Then provide them an opportunity to also explain their condition when they did what they did, take responsibility for what they did, and work with victims to make it right as best as they can.

This proves more effective than our current strategy of letting the person in custody languish away without ever being asked to face the people they actually harmed. Without truly empathizing with the victims that were harmed and understanding what they went through, people who create harms are much more likely to do it again.

Restorative Justice asks alot from both actors and receivers of crime but it also does more to meet the needs of everyone actually involved too. Crime is a violation of relationships much more than it is a breaking of laws. We have gotten way from this fact and in doing so alienated ourselves from each other.

Pathways for L.I.F.E aims to enfuse our culture with more restorative justice. We will grow our prison program so as to raise awareness inside prisons. We will grow a volunteer base which will include those harmed by crime in order to offer surrogate based victim offender dialogue, crime sharing, and mock parole hearings. We will further evolve a correspondence course to reach those in custody that do not have access to prison volunteers or the Pathways for L.I.F.E program.

If you are interested in supporting this effort, please reach out to us. We are looking for volunteers willing to enter correctional environments, advocates willing to reach out to elected officials, District Attorneys, Pardon and Parole Boards, etc in order to make a difference.

In the State of Oklahoma and many others, crime receivers are cut short from getting the healing they need. They are taught that their rights are best served in protesting paroles rather than helping make the person who harmed them never capable of repeating their mistake.

It is unfortunate that crime receivers are unable to get the help they need to really move on. Restorative Justice offers that help in a way that our present politics and criminal justice system remains incapable of providing.

As long as those who advocate for another system remains on the sidelines, we will never create the change we so desperately need in the world.

Email us: [email protected] or [email protected]. We will do our best to respond as soon as possible.