Corrections_Today_May_June_2019

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are needed to reduce current rates of incarceration. Significant actions are being seriously considered and some changes are now being implemented both at the state and federal level. Among these steps are sentencing reforms, the elimination of mandatory minimums, the restoration of discretionary release, enhanced rehabilitation opportunities in prisons, early release incentives for prisoner program participants and better re- entry supports. These reforms are impacting rates of incarceration and no doubt will do so at increasing rates. But Sered correctly maintains that our reluctance to apply alternative sanctions to perpetrators of violent crimes greatly impedes progress in prison population reduction. Traditional wisdom holds that incarceration is always necessary in response to crimes of violence. Sered challenges us to rethink this assumption. She strongly argues that “justice can be served” through restorative justice responses to some instances of serious violent crime without resort to incarceration. She counters the perception that any such response to violent crime is inherently “soft on crime.” She argues this position while recounting cases in which an alternative restorative justice response was successfully implemented at Common Justice. As described by Sered, the restorative justice response to violent crime includes two essential elements. First, this approach puts the needs

and interests of crime victims at the center of each case. Only with the consent of the crime victim is the restorative justice alternative available. Sered explains how this consent can often but not always be attained by first gaining an understanding of the needs and interests of crime victims. The second essential element is that the person identified as committing the violent crime must admit responsibility and must agree to participate in a program which entails a high standard of meaningful personal accountability. Both of these requirements merit additional consideration. In discussing crime victims, Sered describes violent crime victims as being poorly treated in our criminal justice system. She maintains that their needs and interests are not recognized nor respected, and that they are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with what our current system of courts and corrections provides to them. She maintains that their trauma-related needs are rarely addressed, and that the criminal justice system often exacerbates rather than ameliorates trauma. Sered does not deny the anger of victims toward those who have harmed them, nor does she deny that they are often thinking in terms of what can most accurately be described as revenge. She does not attribute to them a “forgive and forget” mentality, nor does she describe most as having a faith-driven mandate to be merciful. Victims do not want to “let them off

Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and A Road to Repair Written by Danielle Sered, The New Press, 2019, 336 pp. Reviewed by John P. Linton, retired

director, Office of Correctional Education, U.S. Department of Education in Washington D.C.

With the publication of “Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and A Road to Repair,” Danielle Sered emerges as an important new voice in U.S. corrections. Her book makes a compelling case for implementing restorative justice responses to instances of violent crime. Her exposition of how and why this is possible is coherently argued and well-grounded in examples from her successful restorative justice program operating in Brooklyn, Common Justice. A national consensus has emerged that the U.S. incarcerates too many people and that reforms

82 — May/June 2019 Corrections Today