HLDW Encouraged to promote restorative justice

Channing Neary, on left, is welcomed by Susan O'Brien, HLDW Vice President

Highland Lakes Democratic Women welcomed Channing Neary as the featured speaker for their June meeting.  Ms Neary is a third generation Texas Attorney. She has learned that what it takes to be a leader in her field is to be an expert, but never lose feeling compassion for her client. This insight is what led Ms. Neary to work for restorative justice. The three primary stakeholders in restorative justice are victims, offenders and their communities of care, whose needs are, respectively, obtaining reparation, taking responsibility and achieving reconciliation.

Ms Neary strongly feels that the criminal justice system is broken. She stated that the cost of incarceration can be 3 times, or more, costly than if money had been spent on true rehabilitation. The system must have open hearts & minds about what justice is. The goal of each community should be to repair this criminal justice system.

Per Ms Neary, in the United States, over 2M people are incarcerated  - 22% are violent offenders, 17 is the age considered to be an adult. Texas is one of 3 states that charge children as adults.  There are 70,000 children in residential detention centers (including immigration detention) in the United States.

In closing, Ms Neary quoted poet Amanda Gorman - “We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice.”