On 31 July 2011, Jacob Dunne threw an unprovoked punch outside a nightclub at James Hodgkinson, a 28-year-old paramedic, who collapsed and later died from swelling to the brain. Jacob was sentenced to 30 months for manslaughter.
A good prisoner, not a good citizen
The author and government advisor says he came out of custody worse than when he went in. “The negative thing about custody is that it makes you a good prisoner, not a good citizen,” he said in a TEDx talk.
“We all have this assumption that people in prison don’t care about the harm they’ve caused. But actually, the way it’s designed doesn’t allow them to express remorse, doesn’t allow them to contribute because they’re out of sight, out of mind, in cells 24 hours a day or don’t have the opportunity to do anything meaningful,” he said in an interview on the Rest is Politics podcast.
This is made worse by the fact that many people caught up in the justice system are labelled negatively by society. “We can’t shame and blame our way into making people change,” he added.
In prison Jacob says he was stuck in a negative cycle where he felt like a victim and blamed other people for his problems.
“James’s parents saved my life“
For Jacob, it wasn’t until he met David and Joan — James’s parents — after they decided to engage in restorative justice that he fully realised he wasn’t the only victim in his situation and started to take responsibility for what happened. They started to ask Jacob questions about his life and what he planned to do with it. For James, this had a radical impact on how he thought about himself. David and Joan “basically saved my life”, he said in a TEDx talk.
David and Joan wanted to know, “was I confronting the causes of my offending behaviour? Was I remorseful? Was I taking responsibility? Was I doing anything that might reduce the chances of something similar happening again?
“Those are questions our criminal justice system is surprisingly poor at answering, despite evidence that these questions matter greatly to both victims and the public. Too often justice is administered for victims and to perpetrators,” wrote Jacob in a recent blog post.
“Having the people who I caused such tragic harm to even take an interest in me, made me want to take an interest in myself,” he said in an interview with Amol Rajan on the Radical podcast. This led Jacob to return to school to complete GCSEs in English, Psychology and Maths, and eventually achieve a first-class undergraduate degree in criminology.
“The people who had been harmed the most in my story were the ones who judged me the least,” said Jacob in his TEDx talk speaking about the compassion he was shown by Joan and David. And this comes down to the core of what helped transform Jacob’s life and is at the heart of restorative justice — healthy relationships.
Relationships are the key
“The quality of the relationships that people have in their lives defines the quality of their lives and the quality of their choices,” said Jacob on the Radical podcast. “If we want to reduce harm, we need to look at society through the lens of relationships.”
Jacob says the main thing that leads people to engage in crime and violence is a lack of meaningful relationships. “If you have good pro-social connections to society, to community, you won’t want to hurt or harm your community. You’ll want to contribute to your community,” he said on the Rest is Politics podcast.
It’s this belief in the importance of relationships that Jacob will bring to the Restoration Revolution this November (16–19), where he will join others exploring what a more restorative and relational approach to justice could look like.
Creating meaningful change will require looking at relationships at every level: between those who have caused harm and those who have experienced it, within the justice system, and across our communities.
Join us in Manchester (16–17 November) or London (18–19 November) to hear from Jacob and be part of the conversation about how we can build a more restorative and relational approach to justice.
Find out more: https://www.shiftuk.org/the-restoration-revolution
