Retributive Empathy: An Introduction.

Christine E. Ohenewah
Jun 23
4 min read

Updated: 12 minutes ago

By: Christine E. Ohenewah, J.D. | June 23, 2025

Smiling person in a black graduation cap and red gown. Indoor setting with modern lighting. Confident and celebratory mood. — *Christine E. Ohenewah* *is a Lawyer, Humanist, and Professor building a university that transforms how people understand and claim power. She is the Founder of* *The Elizabeth Tweneboah Foundation, where she is creating a new model of higher learning that builds creators over consumers and empowers individuals to construct lives aligned with their potential. Her flagship initiative,* *Men's Rea™*, uses legal reasoning to help men build self-governance systems that drive them toward purpose. A graduate of Cornell Law School, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Macalester College, and former White Collar Investigations lawyer, her interdisciplinary work in legal and humanistic thought, power, and gender has been featured in *Business Insider*, *USA Wire, and* *New York Weekly. She writes and speaks on masculinity, legal thinking, and the future of education, and serves as faculty at three universities in Criminology, Sociology, and Law and Ethics.*

[*Note: This piece introduces the foundational concepts of retributive empathy (Ohenewah, 2025), a conceptual framework I developed to integrate the demand for accountability with rigorous emotional attunement within legal practice. It serves as a public entry point to a larger working paper for eventual publication.]

Justice is not merely about what one deserves, but about what one might still become.

I always like to begin each of my courses with the disclaimer that I am neither Olivia Pope, nor am I Annalise Keating. I am not here to teach my students how to clean up scandals, nor am I here to teach them how to get away with murder.

Rather, I lead with the belief that counter to its outwardly detached schema, the law is profoundly human. And justice, as it were, must be more honest about its emotional complexities. Indeed, my goal is to teach a form of lawyerhood that applies the law as a vehicle for transformative growth rather than social control.

This has led me to develop what I call retributive empathy—a framework that integrates retributive models (punishing wrongdoing) and restorative practices (healing through empathy and compassion). Most importantly, this framework empowers victims to honor the plurality of their emotions while shielding marginalized perpetrators from gratuitous punishment or hollow forgiveness.

The Framework Explained.

The legal system forces victims into an impossible bind. Either victims must seek harsh punitive measures to be taken seriously, or they must forgive to be seen as reasonable. However, this binary thinking actively harms the individuals our system claims to serve.

Retributive empathy instead refuses this false dichotomy. It empowers victims to say: I can be angry about the harm you caused me and still care enough about your humanity to hold you accountable in ways that preserve our dignity and enable our transformation.

For marginalized perpetrators, this framework helps to dismantle the burden of excessive punishment as well as performative forgiveness that fails to address root causes behind harm.

Why Retributive Empathy Is Needed.

I once worked with a domestic violence survivor whose prosecutor told her, “He couldn’t have been all that bad if you dated him. At least he didn’t punch you.” This response exemplifies how the legal system retraumatizes victims by forcing them to defend both their experience of harm and their complex (and conflicting) emotions toward their abuser.

Traditional retribution would demand that the survivor prove her abuser’s violence satisfied a monstrous threshold to warrant action. Many restorative approaches might push her toward premature forgiveness. Neither acknowledge the reality that she could simultaneously desire accountability for real harm while recognizing her abuser’s humanity.

Retributive empathy offers an alternative. For the survivor, it affirms: “Your anger, your rage is legitimate. You do not have to minimize your sustained harm(s) or rush toward forgiveness. You are allowed to carry compassion for your perpetrator. You are allowed to demand an accountability that does not dehumanize without forfeiting your right to justice.”

Transforming Legal Practice.

In practice, retributive empathy fundamentally changes how legal practitioners approach victim and defendant advocacy. It asks prosecutors to validate the fluctuating emotions of victims rather than demanding that victims contort themselves into rigid categories. It encourages defense attorneys to acknowledge the defendant’s harms while still advocating for their humanity and potential for growth. It asks judges to do both. Yet most importantly, it refuses to force anyone––victim or offender––into emotional positions they are not prepared for.

A Forward Path.

In all, retributive empathy challenges our most common assumptions about how justice should proceed. It demonstrates that victims can inhabit strength and compassion. They can feel anger and empathy at once, and these contradictions can be honored. For perpetrators––especially those marginalized––it offers the chance to be accountable without being unduly punished and without ignoring the systemic variables that enabled their harmful offenses.

The question, then, is not whether we should punish or forgive (we can do both), but how we might construct a form of justice that serves both truth and hope for all parties involved.

This piece introduces original intellectual work. Please credit the author using the suggested citation below.

Suggested citation:

Ohenewah, Christine E. 2025. “Retributive Empathy: An Introduction.” Power Pro Se. https://www.christineohenewah.com/post/retributive-empathy-an-introduction

License: