Dear Dean Kearney,
As I prepare to return home to Ireland after spending a few interesting and useful months in Milwaukee, I want to thank you for your hospitality and that of the Law School while I was here.
It is reassuring for many of us internationally that work in the area of restorative justice and that Marquette University Law School considers restorative justice an important part of a lawyer’s education in line with its mission of “care for the person.”
It is also encouraging internationally, to all law schools, that Marquette offers a Restorative Justice Initiative and brought a community focus that provides students with substantial leadership training in addition to their considerable technical legal education. I note that it is recognized as one of the most intensive restorative justice programs among the American Bar Association accredited law schools in America.
On a personal note, I have sat and listened to many bright law students in a wide variety of classes where I was very kindly invited to attend, as they shared their hopes and aspirations for meaningful and well paid work. I observed their excitement and interest in many aspects of the law, whether criminal or civil, intellectual property rights and many far too complex for me. However, rarely did I witness engagement like I saw in a restorative justice class. The time to explore and reflect on their personal attitudes to harm, crime and incarceration, their encounters with victims and offenders and the potential interaction between both of these in places other than a court house will, no doubt, have a significant and insightful impact on their professional careers and personal lives.
Over the past weeks I have sat and listened to professors Michael O’Hear and Charles Franklin lecture about sentencing and the recent lecture given by professor Nancy King on recidivism. One couldn’t help but be struck by the need for options other than those available within the current system which has grown Wisconsin’s prison population to 22,000 people and within which a significant racial and ethnic bias exists. While information and analysis of the problem are crucial, options such as restorative justice are badly needed to address the outcome of harm and crime. Marquette is already leading the field by offering the option of not just theory but practice through its clinical work.
I understand that the future of the Restorative Justice Initiative is uncertain due to the retirement of Janine Geske, I have lived and worked long enough to have experienced budget challenges but also know that when something like this initiative speaks to as many people as it does, it is worth exploring every avenue to maintain it. Once something has been dropped, it is harder to revive it. I feel very strongly that not only does Wisconsin need this initiative but, internationally, we all do. I hope that it is retained and developed.
Barbara Walshe works with a restorative justice NGO Facing Forward in Ireland. She came from Ireland in September 2013 to shadow internationally renowned expert Professor Janine Geske at the Restorative Justice Initiative based at Marquette Law School.