Contributed by Sarah Chandler, CCJC Board Member
What needs to change to allow transformation through repentance and forgiveness to become central to the Canadian justice system?
At CCJC’s 40th Anniversary celebration last September, Pierre Allard reminded us that Jesus calls upon us to forgive seventy times seven those who transgress against us.
Tim Newell, former governor of Grendon and Spring Hill prisons, UK, wrote, “The way we consider people who are subject to our system of justice defines our view about the nature of being human. The basic value of human nature is reflected in the way we consider those who have transgressed our expectations and are dependent upon our decisions under the criminal justice system The godliness within each of us is reflected in the way that we can be transformed by the process of repentance and forgiveness From this premise we recognise the potential for transformation within each person; we do not write off groups as untreatable or as evil instead we hold out a vision of their future as members of a community which involves them within it.”
“Forgiving Justice” Swarthmore Lecture 2000, Quaker Home Service.
To what extent do our present penal practices lend themselves to repentance? to forgiveness? What needs to change in order that transformation through repentance and forgiveness become central to the Canadian justice system? What can we, as individuals and as churches do to make these changes happen?