Changing Lenses

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.