In Robert Stacy McCain’s “Everything Is White Supremacy: Inside America’s New Maoist ‘Struggle Sessions’“, I noted a smaller part of something he quoted:

In their “transformative-justice” workshop, my students learned to name “harms.” This language, and the framework it expresses, come out of the prison-abolition movement. Instead of matching crimes with punishments, abolitionists encourage us to think about harms and how they can be made right, often through inviting a broader community to discern the impact of harms, the reasons they came about, and paths forward. In the language of the anti-racism workshop, a harm becomes anything that makes you feel not quite right.

There’s a serial rapist loose in Philadelphia, with four reported sexual assaults near the Broad Street SEPTA line, and, with rape being a crime often not reported, I have to wonder what the perp’s real number of assaults is.

So, I have to ask: how can the “harm” this rapist has done to at least four women in the City of Brotherly Love “be made right”? How can the “harm” done to the 46 people murdered so far this year in Philly “be made right”? Yeah, I can think of one way, involving a rope and an oak tree, but the prison abolitionists would not support that alternative, would they?

Now comes this story:

Oakland baker Jen Angel dies of injuries sustained during attempted robbery

Angel’s family and friends noted her history as an activist opposed to “putting public resources into policing, incarceration, or other state violence that perpetuates the cycles of violence that resulted in this tragedy.”

by Eve Batey | Thursday, February 9, 2023

According to a message sent by the friends and family of Jennifer Angel, the founder of Oakland’s Angel Cakes bakery, Angel died at 5:48 p.m. Thursday evening after doctors confirmed that she had lost all brain function. Her death follows several days on life support at Highland Hospital, where she was cared for after an Uptown Oakland robbery attempt during which Angel was gravely injured.

The message, which is published in full below, noted Angel’s longstanding work as an activist, and urged those mourning her passing not to “continue the cycle of harm by bringing state-sanctioned violence to those involved in her death or to other members of Oakland’s rich community.”

According to the message, Angel Cakes will remain open, “supported by Jen’s estate, and staffed by the talented team that Jen built.” those who want to lend their support are encouraged to purchase gift certificates at the business at 745 5th St. (at Brush Street). Those who wish to honor her legacy, the announcement said, should engage in “leading with love, centering the needs of the most vulnerable, and not resorting to vengeance and inflicting more harm.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Miss Angel was the victim of a robbery which went bad:

Angel Cakes owner Jennifer Angel was leaving her parking spot in the lot of the Wells Fargo on the 2000 block of Webster Street on Monday afternoon when a car pulled up in front of her and blocked her from leaving, her fiance, Ocean Mottley, told The Chronicle. A robber then broke her passenger side window and grabbed something from the car, after which Angel ran after the suspects, Mottley said.

In the process of trying to chase them down, Angel, 48, got caught in the door of the fleeing vehicle and was dragged more than 50 feet before falling in the middle of the street, hitting her head multiple times, Mottley said.

There’s something odd about all of this. Miss Angel, we were told, in the full message from Family and Friends of Jen Angel,^[1]It’s with very heavy hearts that we announce that Oakland baker, small business owner, social justice activist, and community member Jen Angel has been medically declared to have lost all brain … Continue reading that she was “a long-time social movement activist and anarchist, (who) did not believe in state violence, carceral punishment, or incarceration as an effective or just solution to social violence and inequity.” Yet this “anarchist” was outraged enough by the attempted robbery that she ran down the street to try to get back whatever was stolen.

Her “friends and family” wrote, further down,

If the Oakland Police Department does make an arrest in this case, the family is committed to pursuing all available alternatives to traditional prosecution, such as restorative justice. Jen’s family and close friends ask that the media respect this request and carry forward the story of her life with celebration and clarity about the world she aimed to build. Jen’s family and friends ask that stories referencing Jen’s life do not use her legacy of care and community to further inflame narratives of fear, hatred, and vengeance, nor to advance putting public resources into policing, incarceration, or other state violence that perpetuates the cycles of violence that resulted in this tragedy.

Again, I ask, just what “restorative justice” will restore Miss Angel to life?

From the University of Wisconsin Law School:

Restorative justice is a set of principles and practices that create a different approach to dealing with crime and its impacts. Restorative justice practices work to address the dehumanization frequently experienced by people in the traditional criminal justice system. Instead of viewing a criminal act as simply a violation of a rule or statute, restorative justice sees this action as a violation of people and relationships.

Restorative justice seeks to examine the harmful impact of a crime and then determines what can be done to repair that harm while holding the person who caused it accountable for his or her actions. Accountability for the offender means accepting responsibility and acting to repair the harm done. Outcomes seek to both repair the harm and address the reasons for the offense, while reducing the likelihood of re-offense. Rather than focusing on the punishment meted out, restorative justice measures results by how successfully the harm is repaired.

If “restorative justice measures results by how successfully the harm is repaired,” then it must be a failure in this case, because no amount to restorative justice will repair the harm, will bring Miss Angel back from the grave.

If the friends and family of Miss Angel have their way, the criminals who caused Miss Angel’s death will remain free, remain out on the street, and will remain able to robs someone else, make a victim of someone else.

The entire notion of restorative justice is that the criminals are basically good people, people who have been victimized themselves by poverty and bad luck, and just wouldn’t do anything bad if those conditions could be alleviated. But, the odds are that the criminals who did this are drug addicts, people whose free choices are not guided by goodness or compassion, but by the inevitable demands to feed their addiction, to get their next fix. Once addicted, junkies don’t have free will anymore.

Jen’s family and friends ask that stories referencing Jen’s life do not use her legacy of care and community to further inflame narratives of fear, hatred, and vengeance, nor to advance putting public resources into policing, incarceration, or other state violence that perpetuates the cycles of violence that resulted in this tragedy.

Well, sorry Jen’s family and friends, but I am using this specifically to “advance putting public resources into policing (and) incarceration,” because, as a former Pennsylvanian, I’ve seen how the lenient restorative justice policies of District Attorney Larry Krasner and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office have let criminals off lightly, how lenient treatment has gotten the next victims killed. When career criminal Eric Haynes was given break after break after break, he responded to a traffic stop by, allegedly, of course, fighting and then shooting Philadelphia Police Officer Giovanni Maysonet. Giving Mr Haynes all of those breaks didn’t stop him from attempting to kill a cop, and now he’s looking at 10 to 20 years in the big house. Had he not been treated leniently in his previous arrest in Delaware County, he’d have still been behind bars last Wednesday, and Officer Maysonet would be on duty today, rather than recovering from gunshot wounds.

When Edwin Vargas was given break after break after break, in trouble with the law since he was 15-years-old, it didn’t stop him from, allegedly, murdering four people, and now looking at spending the rest of his miserable life behind bars.

There’s only one thing that reduces crime, and that’s to lock up the criminals when they are caught for as long as the law allows, because when they are behind bars, they aren’t out on the streets committing other crimes.

And in very liberal California, the probability that the guys who robbed Jennifer Angel were previously convicted criminals who were treated too leniently are relatively high. What will the family and friends of Miss Angel say if the bad guys are caught, and it turns out that they could, and should, have been behind bars last Monday?