Listening to Ear Hustle

 

We have now seen and heard the Democratic and GOP conventions where crime and justice were central issues. Of course, the two parties have vastly different ideas and ways of talking about the issues with one talking about justice and racial reckoning and the other talking about angry mobs coming to destroy democrat controlled cities.

But I was thinking about these issues in a rather different way today on my walk around the neighborhood as I was listening to a podcast called Ear Hustle. I was, specifically, listening to an episode called Tell Christ I Love Her. The producers summarize the episode as follows:

Tom was a cop; Jason was a teenager in a gang. One night in 1997, they had a violent encounter that Tom describes as “inevitable.” In our season finale, Tom and Jason relate the story of that night, and the series of events that unfolded in the years afterward.

That short, three sentence summary, takes a full hour to unpack and goes deep into the issue of restorative justice. The Restorative Justice Project defines the term as

Restorative justice repairs the harm caused by crime. When victims, offenders and community members meet to decide how to do that, the results can be transformational. It emphasizes accountability, making amends, and — if they are interested — facilitated meetings between victims, offenders, and other persons.

So, clearly, the idea is to try and move beyond the problem we have with crime and justice in this country -- trying to take complicated issues and treat them like simple problems. 

You might have seen another version of this story on television in The Redemption Project with Van Jones.