Issue 46: Winter 2013

Restorative Practices in Papua New Guinea

hen one of the Enga commits murder,

he must answer to tribal law. Given
that this is Papua New Guinea, and that
the Enga set great store by the maxim
Do unto others as they do to you, you
might expect that law to involve swift
and lethal retribution. Yet for the past
seven years, an experiment has been
taking place here that could change that
perception. Instead of summary justice,
there has been an airing of grievances, a
public show of remorseand the lavish
consignment of live pigs to the victims
family.

The result, according to a paper published last week in the

journal Science, is that the number of killings among the
warlike Enga has plummeted. By adopting customary justice
which plays on a perpetrators shame, castigates him in public
and forces him to pay hefty compensation (often spread over
many years), villages have almost dispensed with the need to
jail, banish or kill transgressors.
Traditionally, tribes such as the Enga have been seen as
anarchic and violent, in contrast to our own supposedly more
tolerant culture. Professor Polly Wiessner, an anthropologist
at Utah University, who led the study and has lived among
the Enga, questions that assumption: In fact, these simple
societies do have sophisticated institutions for making peace,
she explains. Its when small societies come together and
agglomerate that you get a terrible period of violence.
The implications of this research are far more important than
any academic debate. Not only does it provide a template
for understanding brutal conflicts of the past, but it offers a
wider message about how we deal with crime. It suggests that
restorative justice is effective because it engages emotions
such as shame and guilt. The Enga are one of the largest tribes
in Papua New Guinea, numbering about half a million people.
They occupy remote highlands in clans of up to 1,000 people,
cultivating sweet potatoes to feed themselves and their pigs.
Old-fashioned wars fought with bows and arrowstypically
triggered by murder, revenge, theft or land disputes cost
around four deaths. Yet between 1991 and 2000, the average
death toll rose to eighteen, as the men acquired firearms.
After 2005, however, the researchers noted a change: deaths
per war fell to around five. After interviewing hundreds of
Engans, Prof Wiessner attributes the relative peace to three
factors: war-weariness, Christian values (more than 90 per
cent of the country is Christian), and the resurgence of village
courts, which exist alongside the state courts set up in colonial
times. During the proceedings, both offender and victim (or a
victims relative) attend with their clans before a magistrate,
usually a village elder. Professor Wiessner says: Sometimes
its just one meeting, where the offenders clan says, 'We
accept liability and well inform you of our plan. Sometimes
cooked pork is given as an initial peace offeringlive pigs are

given later, as part of any final settlement. On other occasions,

the judge will tell the parties to go home and sort it out
themselves. Although the offenders usually get beaten up,
that is a light penalty compared with the death sentence they
might otherwise face. Crucially, further compensation is often
spread over a number of years, which breaks the spiral of
violence: clans refrain from revenge because they know their
next instalment of pigs is at stake.
The result is that village life can resume, even after the most
heinous crimes. Wiessner recalls a particularly harrowing
case of rape and murder: The victims husband accepted
compensation in a village court rather than see the perpetrator
jailed in a state court. That allowed him to pay for a bride, so
that his children could have a mother, and for his children to
go to school. He could move on.
In the UK restorative justice addresses the mismatch between
victims needs and how the state deals with crime; it is about
offenders taking responsibility for harm, and gives a victim
the chance to say: Did you know I had pictures of my children
on the laptop you stole, and I cant replace them? or I no
longer feel safe in my home because of you. Its about putting
a face to a faceless person and finding out theyre not always a
monster.
Just as offenders among the Enga are paraded before village
elders, so restorative justice here encourages criminal and
victim to bring family and friends to meetings. Research by
Prof Joanna Shapland from Sheffield University suggests that,
overall, restorative justice meetings produce a 27 per cent
drop in reoffending. Even the parents of murdered children
have been helped by the process, to the extent that they show
concern for the killers future.
Wiessner suggests that part of the reason for its success could
be that Western justice is not designed to address emotions:
Business is unfinished when an offender is just jailed and
there is no mediation, acceptance of liability, apology to show
respect for loss and restorative justice to make up for that loss.
These are what allow relations to continue into the future.
Re-printed with kind permission of Anjana Ahuja/Telegraph
Media Group 2012