A Crime that Changed Everything

Accepting stolen goods was nothing new to Jackie Katounas. She already had 138 convictions on her record for drug dealing, armed robbery, and fraud, but this was a crime she couldn‘t live with. This time, she knew the victim. He was the owner of the hotel where she was staying and he had shown her kindness. When the man was alerted to her involvement in the crime, she was overcome with shame and remorse. She returned the stolen furniture to him and sincerely apologized. The hotel owner not only forgave her and allowed her to stay in his hotel, but said he still considered her a friend. “His response blew me away,” Jackie now recalls.

That experience radically changed the way Jackie Katounas viewed crime and its consequences. Until she came face-to-face with the victim of her crime, she had never felt even a twinge of regret or guilt. “It was just a way of life,” she says. “I never considered that I was ever hurting anybody.” Her act of contrition toward her victim was a simple form of restorative justice that changed her life forever. “My change came about slowly after that, one step at a time,” she explains, “but I did not commit another criminal offence from that day on.”

And this was no small change. Jackie‘s life had been steeped in crime since she was 12 years old. Addicted to heroin, she was involved with drug dealing, prostitution,and theft. Her crimes quickly escalated to fraud, criminal assault, and bank robberies. She spent the next 20 years in and out of prison and was even transferred from a women‘s maximum security prison to solitary confinement in a men‘s prison due to her uncontrollable behaviour.

A few years after that life-changing experience with the hotel owner, Jackie‘s life became transformed completely. At a friend‘s insistence, she reluctantly attended an Alpha course, a worldwide initiative that presents the basics of Christianity. As a result of what she learned through Alpha, Jackie became a committed Christian and a stalwart activist for restorative
justice. Subsequently, Jackie worked as a facilitator for the Hawkes‘ Bay Restorative Justice Network for five years, and now serves as the Restorative Justice Project Manager with Prison Fellowship New Zealand. She is also a public advocate and speaker on the effectiveness of restorative justice and prison reform. Last year, during the PFI Convocation in Toronto, Jackie was awarded the PFI Kamil Shehade Award for restorative justice, a distinction usually reserved for ministries and rarely given to an individual. 

Jackie knows what it is like to completely change directions in life, and now through restorative justice programmes like the Sycamore Tree Project® she is helping others to make similar changes. “My life has been transformed, not by me, but by the grace and power of my
Saviour,” she says.