Changing Lenses by Howard Zehr

Changing Lenses by Howard Zehr

Our criminal justice system is in crisis.

Courts damage victims and offenders alike. Politicians and the press manipulate crimes to their advantage. Trials become pitched dramas of guilt and innocence while ignoring deep needs for healing and restitution, safety and community.

So what do justice and accountability look like for those who have been harmed? For those who have done harm? How might a biblical vision of shalom and forgiveness change the lens through which we view crime and justice? Twenty-five years after it was first published, Changing Lenses by Howard Zehr remains the classic text of the restorative justice field. Now with valuable author updates on victim-offender conferencing and circle processes and a new section of resources and recommended reading, Changing Lenses shatters our assumptions about crime and offers provocative new paradigms for public policy and judicial reform.

Think you understand crime, the courts, and what real justice looks like? Changing Lenses asks you to think again.

Howard Zehr is often referred to as the Father of Restorative Justice. Since 1996, he has served as Professor of Restorative Justice at Eastern Mennonite University's Center for Justice & Peacebuilding in Harrisonburg, Virginia, an international graduate program for justice and peacebuilding practitioners. Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences and Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims (both with Good Books) are two further portrait/interview books by Howard. Shifting Lenses: A New Perspective for Crime and Justice (Good Books) and The Little Book of Restorative Justice (Good Books) are two of his other works and publications. Throughout North America and globally, he is a frequent lecturer and consultant on themes of justice. Zehr has also worked as a photographer in the past.