About twenty years ago, I evaluated a restorative justice project at Wellingborough Prison in the UK called “Drugs and Crime Mean Doing Time.” It was a grassroots initiative where at-risk children — or those already on the edge of offending — visited the prison for a theatre performance created by inmates.

In the play, the prisoners showed the kids the paths that led them to crime: broken homes, abuse, bullying, the slow slide into coping through substances. Between the scenes, they read out personal testimonies—what they did, why they did it, and what living behind bars was really like.

The children were spellbound. Some cried. Many asked raw, honest questions. All of them left the room shaken, thoughtful, and quieter than when they arrived.

My job at the time was to assess whether this project was effective and whether it could reduce re-offending. After months of interviews, observation, and data analysis, I reached a clear conclusion: yes, the project worked, and it had real potential to keep young people out of the criminal justice system.

Long-term studies hadn’t been carried out yet, but the immediate impact on both the prisoners and the children was unmistakable. The men were taking genuine accountability for what they had done — sometimes for the first time in their lives — and the children were given a real, visceral understanding of how crime unravels a life.

Learning What Creates Real Change

I came to understand this more deeply during my years as a Pagan chaplain in a prison for men who had committed sexual offences. One of the reasons I eventually chose chaplaincy over psychology was simple: I saw that spirituality often created a deeper and more honest engagement with responsibility.

The rituals, conversations, and reflective writing we did together went straight to the core. Many of the men began — sometimes for the first time — to look directly at the harm they had caused, especially the wounding of the feminine through violence, coercion, and rape.

I will never forget a Goddess ritual we held one afternoon. As we moved through the invocation, a couple of the men broke down in tears and asked the Divine Mother for forgiveness for the suffering they had created. It was raw, confronting, and strangely hopeful — not because it undid anything, but because it showed that change was possible when the heart finally opened to truth.

Does Punishment Actually Work?

Now, as I’ve just started training as a Restorative Practitioner with the Justice Academy, I find myself returning to those same questions: what actually helps people change? What truly restores? And does punishment — as we currently use it — really work?

Our current justice system tends to focus on behaviour and is structured in a way that’s more punitive and reactive than restorative. Punishment does not automatically create insight, understanding, change, or repair. In fact, the opposite often happens: People often become harder inside the prison system, especially now that it’s underfunded, overcrowded, and flooded with drugs — sometimes literally delivered by drones. People learn more about criminal activity, gain new criminal contacts, pick up addictions if they didn’t already have one, and get pulled into cycles of violence.

A Different Model of Justice

So what is different about restorative justice? And what makes it more effective in creating real change? To answer that, we need to understand what RJ actually is.

Restorative justice is a model of justice that shifts the focus away from punishment and toward understanding, accountability, and repair. It takes into account both the victim and the offender. When appropriate and safe, they are brought together in a facilitated dialogue to understand what actually happened: Why did the offender commit this particular act? What impact did it have on the victim? In this space, both sides have the chance to speak, ask questions, be heard, and explore what repair might look like — if repair is possible.

Often, these conversations are profoundly healing. The offender begins to understand the impact of their actions — not in an abstract way, but through the lived experience of the person they harmed. They see the long-term consequences, the emotional fallout, the human cost. And the victim, in turn, begins to understand why the offence happened in the first place: perhaps there was addiction, desperation, trauma, or financial pressure. That understanding doesn’t excuse anything, but it creates context.

This is where the common critique of RJ being “soft” falls apart. There is nothing soft about taking real responsibility, about facing the person you harmed, or about seeing the ripple effects of your actions. It can be far tougher than a prison sentence. It humanises both sides. And when victims understand that the crime wasn’t personal — that it came from the offender’s struggle rather than from malice — something heavy often loosens inside them.

The truth is that most people who have been harmed are not seeking vengeance. What they really want is answers, closure, perhaps an apology. They want to understand: Why did the offender act as they did? And what can be done now so that repair — real justice — can happen, and so the same harm isn’t repeated with someone else?

Healing Through Truth

All of this unfolds through honest dialogue and genuine connection. There is something deeply transformational about naming your experience, being heard, and being witnessed in your truth. And there is a profound shift that happens when people finally see each other’s humanity.

This applies far beyond the criminal justice system. In a world where disappearing, avoiding, and deflecting have become common, taking responsibility has become rare. Yet it is one of the most powerful forces we have for healing — in communities, in relationships, and in ourselves.

We live in a world that is increasingly overwhelmed, disconnected, and built around shame rather than responsibility. In that environment, defensiveness becomes a kind of armour. It feels safer to shut down or disappear than to face the impact we’ve had on someone else. But when we choose understanding instead of punishment, dialogue instead of silence, something shifts. We begin to remember that justice isn’t only about consequences — it’s about repair, accountability, and the slow rebuilding of trust. In a time when so much feels fractured, restorative justice offers us a different path: a way of restoring what was broken by learning how to see one another — and ourselves — with honesty instead of fear.