The powerless have always been punished more harshly than the powerful. There’s nothing new or surprising in that fact itself.

But it is surprising, and quite poignant, to see it highlighted on the front page of the most read newspaper in our country’s power-centre.

We proudly count Aotearoa New Zealand among the fairest of societies. Yet a caring look shows how fairness may find itself relative to power; even here.And so its positive to see this mainstream attempt to shine a beam into the structures of our systems. I pray that this exploration continues.I also pray that it moves beyond simply looking at equity in our ‘Punishment Systems’.

In Biblical interpretations, crime is a symptom of an unwell society, and each criminal act a wound that hurts its ‘wholeness’. Justice is meant to be the salve that heals, recreating lost wholeness.So I find it upside-down in a way, to speak of an equalizing of punishment, for powerful and powerless, without speaking of an equalizing of healing – for the individuals concerned, and also for the wider human family of whom they are part.

Jesus’ response to injustice, was to heal. His last act as a free man, in Gethsemane, in the face of an overwhelming injustice, was to heal. (Lk 22:51).

What if our paradigm for justice were to alter, from ‘Crime and Punishment’, to ‘Hurt and Healing’?

Maybe that would allow us to measure justice by its capacity to heal – like those who are seeking the wider establishment of restorative justice here in our land.

Sentences are imposed when laws are broken. The sentenced are distanced – through severing community ties, diminishing mana, limiting freedom. Yet they remain part of our family, and will return.

We can control the nature and quality of that return.

I pray that as we see discussion of the ‘Sentencing Gap’,

we better understand the silent injustice of our ‘Healing Gap’.

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