When Mona Gustafson Affinito talks about restorative justice for those who have committed crimes, she speaks not only from a philosophical perspective, but also from a personal one.

Gustafson Affinito’s nephew is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for vehicular homicide. While she can bring a personal touch to her discussion, she still knows that his experience is being changed from that of most prisoners by what those on the outside are doing for him.

“He has a lot of support, both personal and financial, making the experience different for him than it is for others who don’t have what he has on the outside,” she wrote in an email.

Gustafson Affinito is just one of four speakers that will be featured in a new set of dialogues beginning Tuesday at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska.

News and parables

In his fifth dialogue series, entitled “One in 100: Reclaiming Community in a Lock-Down Society,” Shepherd of the Hills Pastor Gordon Stewart is focusing on the role of community. He said the idea for this series came from an article he read in the New York Times about the high number of incarcerated individuals in America.

“For the first time in the history of our country, more than one in 100 adults is in jail or prison, or on parole or probation – the highest of any developed country,” he wrote, adding that he saw a connection between the news and a parable.

“I knew it was bad, but the report of one in roughly 100 hit me as the parable of Jesus playing out before our eyes,” wrote Stewart in an e-mail. “The parable of the lost sheep, which is really about the 99 who think they’re not lost. In this case, the one who gets lost in the system gets to stay lost, forever separated from the 99 by community attitudes and a system that never lets them forget.”

Kicking off the discussion on Sept. 30 will be Esther Tomljanovich, a retired Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice. She will talk about the factors that contribute to crime - “the failure of our basic institutions – the family, the church, the community, the lock of opportunity and hopelessness.”

“The courts are the flash point where all those failures of society come together,” she wrote in an e-mail. “And as crimes become more violent, so does our response to crime become more violent – lock them up for longer and longer; be sure when they get out of prison that they cannot live in our neighborhoods; and that many jobs are unavailable to them.”

Stewart says Tomljanovich will set the stage and the theme for the discussion series. Following her on Oct. 14, Gustafson Affinito will “motivate us to think in terms of restorative justice instead of retributive justice,” he said.

Gustafson Affinito is a professor emeritus from the Southern Connecticut State University and the Adler Graduate School. Stewart notes that she has done “pioneering work in the field of victim-offender mediation and the social psychology of forgiveness.”

She argues that justice is vengeance and creates a chain of hate. “Unless we find an alternative to vengeance, it is not only the suffering ‘one’ who is lost, but the community of which that ‘one’ is, or could be, a part,” she wrote.

On Oct. 28, Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight will discuss effective ways to welcome home the ‘one’ after release from incarceration. He’ll be followed on Nov. 11 by former Chaska Mayor Bob Roepke who will talk about how to foster a sense of community while a city experiences unprecedented growth and change.

Hunger

Stewart said he hopes this series will continue to get people thinking and talking. He has been encouraged by the attendance at previous sessions, which vastly outweighed his expectations and told him there was a “hunger” for such discussion in the community.

“Hunger for thoughtful discussion of critical public issues locally and globally,” he wrote. “Hunger for something deeper than slogans and sound bytes, hunger for relationship with others who care about the big questions.”

He hopes this series will satisfy some of those cravings, especially as they relate to the role of the community.

“Every human being needs a community,” he wrote. “We need to create communities where no one is a stranger.”

-Mollee Francisco, staff writer

Dialogues

What: “One in 100: Reclaiming Community in a Lock-Down Society”

Where: Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church (145 Engler Blvd.)

When: 7-8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, Sept. 30, Oct. 14, 18, Nov. 11

Cost: Free and open to the public

More info: www.shepherdofthehillchurch.org

“The 99 and the One”

Speaker: Hon. Esther Tomljanovich

“Save One; Save All; Restorative Justice/Restored Community”

Speaker: Mona Gustafson Affinito, Ph.D.

Oct. 28

“Welcoming Home the One”

Speaker: Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight

Speaker: Former Chaska Mayor Bob Roepke

TELL US: What do you think the role of community should be?