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Crime and Punishment Versus the Navajo Way of Harmony
an article by Tony Dominski
When is the last time you read a crime novel where the policeman let the murderer go? In Sacred Clowns, Tony Hillerman poses a situation in which Jim Chee, a Navajo policeman studying to be a shaman, considers this option.
In the novel, Chee investigates an elusive hit-and-run driver who killed a man. The driver, who is also a Navajo, was so drunk that he was not aware of the crime and left the scene. When the man discovered what he had done, he started anonymously sending a few hundred dollars a month to the bereaved family. The offender holds a job and is the guardian of his grandson who was severely disabled by fetal alcohol syndrome.
Chee decides not to arrest the man and to help him remain in hiding. He worries about what would happen to the disabled grandson if his grandfather went to prison. Also, the grandfather showed remorse by sending money to the dead man's family.
Under the American style of punitive justice the grandfather would have been sent to jail, costing taxpayers $30,000 per year, the grandson's well-being would be jeopardized, and the family of the victim would no longer receive monthly compensation money. Hillerman's conclusion: the Navaho idea of harmony is better restored by keeping the old man out of jail.
If restoring harmony were the American ideal, would poor undereducated criminals be "sentenced" to college or educational school? Would drug use be treated as a medical instead of a criminal problem? Would money now spent on prisons go to compensating victims?
Book information: Sacred Clowns, by Tony Hillerman, 1993; HarperCollins Publishers; 305 Pages.
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DISCUSSION
Question(s) related to this article:
Restorative justice, What does it look like in practice?
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Latest reader comment:
On this theme, I encourage CPNN readers to read Restorative Justice for Children in Brazil.
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