Forgiveness key to restorative justice success
Published on: Monday, March 11, 2019
By: David Thien
KOTA KINABALU: Council of Restorative Justice Sabah (CRJS) head Datuk K.H. Tan says restorative justice is difficult to implement, but is crucial for a healing process to begin for the victim(s) of a crime, and that a willingness to forgive is key to restorative justice success.
“It’s hard for people to forgive and forget. It doesn’t mean to forgive is to forget. Forgive yes, forget not necessary,” a speaker Dr William Wan said earlier.
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Tan shared his views during a question and answer session where he narrated how a father begged forgiveness in prison from his visiting daughter two years ago of whom he had raped and the girl she gave birth to who is biologically the rapist’s daughter too.
“It’s a Sugut-Paitan case of a native man who raped his daughter. It was brought to us. He wanted to meet his daughter and his eight-year-old granddaughter who he is the father of. We made it happen. “There were a lot of tears, lot of forgiveness. The daughter hugged the father and forgave him. We saw this healing happened. How to forget, when you have this child.”
“Restorative justice is not in opposition to retributive justice. Restorative justice allows a healing for the relationship.”
In this case, the rapist is still serving out his sentence for his crime as the speaker Dr William Wan said, “Restorative justice is not a substitute to retributive justice. All actions have consequences. There is no excuse.”
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There are more than 3,000 prisoners in the Kepayan Prison which was built with a capacity for 1,500 prisoners. It is not the only prison in Sabah or Malaysia that is overcrowded pending a solution form the government
CRJS organised the forum titled ‘Restorative Justice – an Alternative to Imprisonment’ last Thursday and Friday at the Grandis Hotel here.
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Tan said there was a Kudat case where the teenager sons murdered the father. The father was always drunk and punching and kicking his sons instead of loving them. So the sons chopped off the legs of the father who kicked them and the hands of the father who punched them out of anger and bitterness.
“To cut a long story short, the process took a long time. Tan Sri Richard Malanjum helped us. The boys were released into our halfway home for counselling.
“The boys will be charged as adults. The boys were released on good behaviour bond after RM20,000 was paid. It does not changed the fact that somebody died.”
Tan continued on with how a father reported his teenager son to the police for drug offence and how he met with the police to sort out the matter without condemning the minor to a fate of imprisonment where the police do not segregate minors from hardened criminals in the lockup.
This is one of the examples of how restorative justice helps to keep minor offenders out of prisons now facing serious problem of overcrowding by using mediation or reconciliation over minor crimes.
Speaker Dr Ramy Bulan explained that some police personnel are unfamiliar with special provisions under the Child Act 2001 thus minors not afforded the protection due to them with improper tactics used in interrogation.
“There’s abuse of remand procedures. There is no separation of child offenders from adults in police lockups.”
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