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Restorative justice lessons from the fish house
MICHAEL R. PANTER
Law Bulletin columnist
Published: July 19, 2017
Martha Mills is an American hero. She was my supervising judge in the Paternity Division back when children of unmarried parents were treated separately and, some might say, not equally. It was over at 32 W. Randolph St., no windows and the sun didn’t shine much, figuratively or literally. Martha battled relentlessly to make it work.
I didn’t understand until much later that she had been fighting for equal rights all of her life, She was a leading trial lawyer in the civil rights movement. Martha beautifully inscribed a copy of her book “Lawyer, Activist, Judge: Fighting for Civil and Voting Rights in Mississippi and Illinois” for me and I recommend it as both a history lesson and a great read. The book is one amazing story after another.
I wanted to hear more about her battles. She wanted to talk about her passion for restorative justice, another way to resolve disputes.
It all started on a trip to Cinque Terre, Italy, with seven other women all involved in restorative justice. Their stories made perfect sense to her. Martha promptly went to Minnesota where restorative justice was being used extensively. She remembers one case clearly.
In the winter, everyone in this particular community slid their treasured fish houses out onto the frozen lakes and rivers for ice fishing. Kids trashed a few and it was decided to try restorative justice instead of sending them through juvenile court.
“Everybody agreed they’d like to try it except one guy, who was really pissed. He thought his fish house was the world’s greatest thing since Bluebeard’s Castle. Hanging would be too good, something like that.”
They had a circle — a restorative justice technique adopted from Native American culture. In a circle, the victim, offender and community meet to talk out issues and, as a group, decide on punishment.
The boys said why they had trashed the fish houses and answered questions from everybody. The man angry about his house refused to speak, asking his 22-year-old son to take his turn.
“[The son] talked about how every single winter, he and his brothers and his dad went out on the fish house, what a great time they had, how every year they bought some new goofy gadget for it and they talked about it all year long and everything. After a fair amount of conversation, they agreed that the boys would do some clean up and repair, and they would pay some amount in monetary damages; very small, because they didn’t have much, and that they would do some community service, which does not mean that you’re going to go out on the highway all by yourself and pick up trash. It means you do actual work in the community, with adults and kids your age, so that they learn to value you, and you in turn learn to value them.
“When they got through all of that, the person who was circle keeper said, ‘Does anybody else have anything they’d like to say?’ This guy who had been so pissed stood up and said, ‘Yeah, I do. At one level, I’m not at all happy this happened, but at another level, I am. I don’t think I ever would have heard my son talk about how much this meant to him, and I’m grateful for that. When these kids have done absolutely everything that they promised to do, I’d like for them and their dads to come out and spend some time with us in the fish house.’”
After Minnesota, Martha trained in the Yukon with the Intuits. She followed a judge in Carcross who used restorative justice in his cases. He wasn’t “Judge” when he did it, just “Sam” and an equal in the circle.
Martha explained that restorative justice is not about apologies or forgiveness. Neither is required. It’s more about empowering people to find their own solutions.
“When people deal with things themselves, they can come up with surprising, surprising results. It happens so often. The circle keeper is there to make sure everything stays safe, and the people in the circle agree to the rules for the circle, like the talking piece and things like that.”
I asked if she thought the language, including “circle keeper,” might not be off-putting and sort of touchy-feely. But she clarified that restorative justice is a very different idea. It’s not like a mediation and it is not like therapy.
“A mediator has a lot more authority than the people and can do some things to encourage or say, ‘This is how I think you ought to decide it’ or things like that. A circle keeper doesn’t do any of that. The circle belongs to the people in it. They agree, at some point when the circles form, they agree on what values they would like to govern the circle and almost always they agree on things like truth, respect, safety and whole lots of other similar things. They agree on rules, like the talking piece. When I pass you this sacred bottle, you can talk. If you don’t want to talk, pass it to the next person. If you don’t have it, you can’t talk, and you really need to listen to everybody seriously.
“As the circle goes along, frequently the circle keeper doesn’t have to do anything. Somebody else is going to say, ‘Mike, you don’t have the talking piece, and you’re talking.’ It takes on a life of its own, and it takes on what the people in it want to happen. The circle keeper can sense when they’ve talked through a problem, and when they’re perhaps ready to move on to how they could deal with it. There are ways she can suggest that, if they’re ready, they might want to talk about things they could do to make the problems better. It’s totally their decision, and that’s why it comes out surprisingly because it’s not anything you would have thought of.”
When Martha was on the bench, she tried to use restorative justice techniques. In one case, a Chicago fireman bitterly opposed allowing his daughter’s mother to move their 11-year-old daughter Alyssa to Hawaii. He was very close to her, and his dad drove her to school daily. The father had agreed, on a temporary basis, to let the mom take Alyssa to Hawaii while she helped start a business there, but mom soon decided she wanted to stay. All of the grandparents and cousins got involved in the dispute.
Martha made her ruling as required, but she also knew the harm it could do to the family. She found someone qualified and they had a circle over Christmas. Everyone came. The girl recognized education opportunities might be better here, but she was happy in Hawaii.
Martha later heard about what happened. Everyone talked a long time. The dad talked about how he had been diligently contributing for years to the Illinois College Fund and wanted his daughter to use that money. Mom said, “Oh, don’t give me that stuff again.” He said, “No, let me tell you why. When I graduated from high school, my dad was so proud. He said, ‘You know, you’re the first person in our whole family that ever graduated from high school.’ I knew when I had a child, I wanted my child to graduate from college and be the first person in my family to graduate from college.’ Mom said, ‘I really didn’t know that.’ The whole thing just sort of melded together.
“Finally the father said … he didn’t have to, because he was winning in court, ‘OK, I will let you stay there, but we’re going to have to come up with some arrangements for communication, vacations and finances and all kinds of things.’
“The thing about it, not only did it really work well and the girl was happy, but good effects of the circle continued for years, which is one of the really remarkable things about restorative justice.”
A broken tooth was the subject of another memorable case. Ordinarily, a tooth might not be a big deal, but this happened when one girl punched out another right before prom.
“The girl was devastated, because she had a date. The tooth couldn’t be fixed in time. The other girl said, ‘I’ll pay your damn dentist bill,’ but of course that wasn’t the real issue.
“She was going to go like this all night, and she couldn’t smile and she couldn’t eat, and they had all these plans! After the prom, we had a circle with the two girls and their moms. The mom and the girl who was hurt talked about how her whole life, the prom was the most important thing that ever was. She was all prepared, had her plans set and had been so excited about going.
“They talked it through for a long time, and the two girls came up with the idea that this was a matter of nobody thinking before they acted, and a little long-range thinking would have prevented the problem. The two girls came up with a skit about long-range thinking, and it was hilarious. It was like a half an hour skit or something, and they gave it to certain classes in their high school. So many people liked it, they were asked to do it in one of the middle schools.”
After leaving the bench, Martha started a company called In-Circle Solutions, which is writing a book and a practice manual for people in and out of the legal system. They’ve worked in Boston and are starting a project in another Illinois county.
Cook County is working on a court project with Circuit Judge Colleen Sheehan, the North Lawndale Community Restorative Court. The planning group already has an exciting array of representatives who are focusing on serving ages 18 to 24. The building has to have multiple entrances.
“You and the other, this gang member from the next block over, can’t go to the same entrance. It’s serious stuff.”
Hon. Michael R. Panter (Ret.) is a senior mediator at ADR Systems of America LLC. He previously served in the Law, Family and Municipal Divisions of the Cook County Circuit Court. He was a trial lawyer for 30 years. Share responses and comments at mikepanter.com.