This essay is based on my reading of the Contemporary Justice Review's special issue on Symposium on Restorative Justice, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2000.

"Crime is primarily an offense against human relationships and secondarily a violation of a law (since laws are writtent to protect safety and fairness in human relatonships)." and "Restorative Justice recognizes that crime (violation of persons and relationships) is wrong and should not occur and also recognizes that after it does there are dangers and opportunities." from Fundamental Principles of Restorative Justice presented at NCPCR, May 1995, at p. 413 of special issue.

My concern here is that as we teach restorative justice to others, who may not come from the same situational context we do, that there may be some who accept the normative definition of crime, when that definition, in fact, presents some unstated assumptions that operate against social justice. On this I'll site Minow, and Habermas, and Freire (circles of certainty), and others. And I'll speak of personal encounters in which this issue has arisen.

One of my principal concerns in this regard is that humans differ considerably in their tolerance for ambiguity and their need for creative freedom and risk-taking. Some of the unstated assumptions operating in defining crime are about leading a "well-ordered" life, about refraining from unnecessary risk, and about doing thins as they've always been done within the given culture. Some of us like risk-taking andre always looking for new ways to approach old problems. Some of us don't follow neat linear patterns, but instead take giant intellectual leaps and conceive of new ways of doing things: like Einstein when he conceived of "relativity."

Over the last few decades we have come more and more to recognize that such differences are not to be obliterated in the interest of control and uniformity, but instead are integral to both new growth, which requires such cognitive leaps, AND the steadfast holding to precedent, to the stability of the "way we do things," which are the essence of stewardship, or the managing of our growth and its integration into the whole system of our culture . Corporations today give considerable latitude to the "entrepreneurial" risk-taking behavior of some of their executives. Consider Jastrow's role in the Enron affair. He was allowed to create partnerships and risk billions in pursuit of huge profits.

---

---