Lanier’s probation work reframed the photographs as a criminal harm needing restitution

Evidence

Prior to the March 2017 conference—and so seven years after my mother died—I was willing to work with Harvard to tell Renty’s story in a way that memorialized him as the great person he was. But when I left Cambridge that day, I understood, thanks to Coates, that a crime was committed when the images were taken—their likenesses stolen—from my ancestors, who had no choice but to sit for those pictures, which was evidence of plunder. Because of my work as a probation officer, I was well versed in the concern of restitution and victims’ rights. One of the first things I learned as a trainee was that property wrongfully taken must be returned, and that the victim must be made whole. Throughout my twenty-seven-year career, I’d conducted countless restitution studies and presentence investigations, where I made recommendations to the court as to how to best meet the needs of the crime victim. A criminal act was committed when Renty and Delia were forcibly photographed. What would make them whole? — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the legal-conceptual pivot from memorialization to crime-victim framing that drives the whole case.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the sacrifice/corpses article’s theme of what institutions owe to the dead and their descendants.