Restorative Justice

We hear these stories all the time. In Chicago, 26-year-old Bethany McGee was riding in a Chicago Transit train, and was doused with gasoline and set on fire by Lawrence Reed, a career criminal who had 72 prior arrests. Ms. MaGee is clinging to life in the hospital with severe burns over 70% of her body. When asked why she set Mr. Reed free, the judge, Teresa Molina-Gonzalez said, “I can’t put everyone behind bars just because the State Attorney asks me to.”

In August, 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who fled to the United States to escape the violence from the Russian war, was stabbed through the heart and killed on a Charlotte light rail train by Decarlos Brown who is a career criminal who had been arrested and released at least 14 other times.

In New York City, Tyquan Manassa, 28, stood on a train platform, pulled out a knife and began slashing people in the face and body. He was eventually arrested and taken into custody. Earlier in the year, Manassa had been arrested for criminal mischief inside a shelter where he was staying and then released. Since 2014, Manassa has been arrested over a dozen times, mostly for assaults and criminal mischief. And the judges have continued to release him back onto the street.

On January 17, 2025, career criminal, Khyre Holbert, who was serving 20 years in federal prison for gun and narcotics charges, had his sentence commuted by the autopen that was running the White House for 4 years. Nine months later, on October 4, 2025 Mr. Holbert was arrested for first-degree assault, use of a weapon to commit a felony, and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person after going on a shooting spree in downtown Omaha, Nebraska which sent a 28-year-old man to the hospital.

In Charlotte this month, Tracoby Meeks was arrested for the murder of a 17-year-old Monroe High School student, Navaeh Carter, in a drive-by shooting. In the previous 17 months, Meeks had been arrested four other times for crimes such as possession of weapons of mass destruction, felony drugs charges, break-in, gun charges, conspiracy, resisting arrest, and armed robbery. He was released within 3 days after each one of those arrests.  

On November 5, 2025, in Charlotte, Dontaveon Craig, was arrested on for assaulting a woman and possessing a controlled substance, his 52nd arrest over more than a decade. He posted bond and was released approximately 10 hours later. 

In 2017, Shaurn Thomas, a Philadelphia man sued and won a $4.1 million settlement after serving 24 years in prison for a murder conviction that was overturned. He was portrayed as a peaceful innocent black man who was convicted wrongly based on the color of his skin. This case was used to show how racist our judicial system because they send peaceful black men to jail for crimes they did not commit. In 2023, Thomas was convicted of gunning down his girlfriend’s friend, Akeem Edwards, after he failed to pay out $1,200 for the cocaine that Thomas gave him to sell. He was awarded life-changing money, and he used it to commit crimes and murder people, and we are supposed to believe that he was wrongfully convicted the first time.

I could list at least 20 other such stories that have occurred in the last two years. It is always the same. A career criminal who happens to be a person of color, is set free by a judge, and they continue to commit more serious crimes, and are continually set free, until they eventually murder someone. And everyone is in shock that this person who has been arrested dozens of times for violence, actually committed an act of violence that resulted in someone’s death. These are not just second and third chances, they are fourteenth chances, fifty-second chances, seventy-second chances. When is enough, enough?

This is what is called restorative justice. Certain members of the judiciary believe that when a minority commits a crime, he or she is not responsible for it, the system is responsible for the crime, the legacy of slavery and the history of systemic racism is responsible for the crime, socio-economics is responsible for the crime, not the person who actually committed the crime. So, they believe that it is not only unfair and unjust, but also racist to put a minority criminal behind bars because he is not the root cause of his criminal behavior. This is why the left wants to defund the police, have cashless bail and close down prisons. These things are racists.

Restorative justice is not justice. Restorative justice is perpetuating injustice. It is an immature way of administering justice. We have been taught that; two wrongs don’t make a right; an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. We cannot make amends for the injustices of the past by creating more injustice in the present. That is medieval justice.

In Pakistan, a few years ago, a village council applied restorative justice when it ordered a man to rape a 16-year-old girl because the girl’s brother had raped his 12-year-old sister. This is the path we are going down with restorative justice. Young innocent white women are being stabbed and murdered and set on fire because 50 to 100 years ago white men wrongly convicted black men, sending them to jail and even their deaths. That was injustice. Yes. Complete injustice, but nothing that is happening today can make amends for injustices that were committed against people who are no longer with us.

Restorative justice is merely creating a slew of new innocent victims, and nothing more. Bethany Magee, Iryna Zarutska and Navaeh Carter did nothing in their lives to deserve to be victims of these types of violent crimes. Our justice system is becoming inverted. It is hell-bent on protecting the criminal to such an extent that it is endangering the lives of innocent law-abiding citizens. These judges are not merely trying to ensure fairness in the legal system for all defendants; they are trying to right past wrongs with present wrongs. The black man who was lynched in Alabama in 1928 by the KKK is not somehow restored and does not receive justice because a white Ukrainian woman was stabbed through the heart on a Chicago train in 2025. That thinking is even worse than what the village council did in the Pakistan a few years ago.

And beyond the injustice of this type of thinking, it sends the absolute wrong message to the people they claim they are trying to help which in the end creates more criminals and more victims. By not holding these people accountable for their crimes, by claiming that something else is responsible for their actions, they are making the statement that these people are powerless in controlling their behavior and determining their futures. They are telling these people that they are perpetually victims of the circumstance of their birth and their group history. And that victim mentality not only stagnates their growth as human beings, but also gives them a perpetual excuse to commit future wrong actions.

Not only are these judges setting career violent criminals back onto the street to assault and murder innocent people, apparently, we are not allowed to even defend ourselves from the violence of these career criminals. Charles Foehner, a 67-year-old Queens man with no prior arrests or criminal record was sentenced to four years in Rikers Island prison by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz after Foehner shot and killed, Cody Gonzalez, a man who had 15 prior arrests and was in the process of attacking and mugging him. So, apparently, we are supposed to stand there and allow career criminals who should be behind bars, to mug us, rob us, assault us, stab us, set us on fire or kill us because if we defend ourselves, there is a good chance we will be the ones sent to a prison like Rikers Island. The violent criminals have become the victims, and the victims are treated like violent criminals. And we are supposed to sit here and repeat, “Thank you sir, may I have another.”

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Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.