By Rosie Chadwick
Serving prisoner Nathan* shared his thoughts on this subject at a Mint House network event.
Hearing Nathan talk, you'd have to say the answer is a resounding 'yes'. Nathan vividly described the moments before he came face to face with the mother of a young man (the brother of his ex-girlfriend) shot dead in an act of gang violence that led to his 18 year sentence for being at the scene while someone with him fired the gun.
"I've faced a lot of things in my life," Nathan recalled, " but in that moment I was the most scared I've ever been. She told me all the hurt, all the turmoil she'd gone through, and all she wanted to know from me was why. She said 'I want you to do something meaningful with your life and make sure two lives aren't wasted.' That moment, that day in that room, changed a lot of things in my life. I left thinking I didn't have any right to hold a grudge in my life."
Nathan talks movingly about being hugged in a way he never had been by his own mother, and about the chain reaction since: his realisation that he needed to take responsibility for the example he was setting; his acknowledgement of what had gone on, including while he was inside; his journey of therapy and education; and his messages to other young prisoners saying 'this is a waste of your life.' His ambitions now are to work with young people, steering them away from gang violence. "As a child I wanted to help people. I've been restored to thinking I can help people and do it in the right way."
While a restorative meeting was clearly a turning point for Nathan, the same can't be said of everyone. Nathan's conclusion? "Prison can be restorative if you engage with it in the way you need to for your own personal development, but there are many barriers in the way...So many people get missed in there."
Timing came across as key. Prisoners need to be receptive. Victims need to feel that a meeting would be helpful. Both these things need to coincide. But when they do, lives can be transformed.
* Not his real name.