Let’s talk about the cost of the clink: With the United States having the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, with costs to maintain it soaring, and with high recidivism, most Americans agree that some drastic improvements to our criminal justice system—and we’re talking Ty Pennington drastic—are in order.

The trouble is that the specifics of “Extreme Makeover: Prison Edition” rarely meet with agreement. Some Americans think incarceration should involve a rehabilitative element; others don’t want to pay for it. Sarah Palin praises the retribution that comes with putting a murderer to death, while Sister Helen Prejean preaches that such penalties don’t deter crime. When Californians passed Proposition 21, they agreed that 14-17-year-old juveniles should be treated as adults and put behind bars, while two years later, the government in Louisiana shut down the Tallulah Correction Center because they thought recidivism would be lower if youth offenders stayed out of prison.

So what would a better model look like? Seated in nosebleed seats, watching Shaq hobble off the court with his now infamous Achilles tendon injury a few weeks ago, I turned to my husband and, in a complete non sequitur, announced that I thought the answer lay in basketball.

Now, I should preface all of this by saying that I am a relative newcomer to the sport (though I am proud to say that as a five foot two inch fifth grader, I was the star of the elementary school team—too bad I never grew after that).

So based upon the foundation laid by my elementary school gym teacher and some very patient explanations from my husband, here is what I have thus far learned about basketball justice: Currency in the economy of basketball is an orange ball falling through a nylon net, which means that a foul is objectionable because it prevents a team gaining currency, from scoring either immediately or in the abstract. When a foul occurs in basketball, it might be likened to a criminal activity, though obviously crimes in society take more diverse—and usually more devastating—forms than what we see on the court. That makes sense. In the real world, currency or value cannot be reduced to one item: There are so many valuables that could be taken, everything from material possessions to confidence, love, trust, health, and one’s very life.

Because there are many different kinds of fouls in basketball, there are also several kinds of recompense, three to be specific. Fouls that occur early in a quarter and that don’t directly inhibit a shot might result in the non-offending team receiving custody of the ball. In a flagrant or intentional foul—which harms a player’s safety or health—the offending party might be removed from the court. These show that graver violations require more serious responses, even benching, which might be likened to jail time.

But perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the basketball justice system is the free throw, which, if we think in justice terms, functions as a kind of restitution, an opportunity to regain the points deprived by the foul. In a free throw, the victimized party takes one or more unobstructed shots at the basket, and the fouling team plays a supportive role by being present with the player but not interfering with the shot. In this way, they acknowledge the harm done and take responsibility for it (though, of course, the more pragmatic side of me acknowledges that they also surround the player in order to gain possession of the ball once the free throw is over).

So what can those interested in reforming the justice system learn from a basketball fouling system? One thing they can learn is the importance of community accountability. In basketball, anybody can be fouled—the benched players, the coaches, even the audience, if they become lewd or distracting. Back in February, a University of Louisville cheerleader threw a ball while time was still on the clock and received a technical foul that nearly cost the team the game. What examples like this show is that the responsibility for a team’s conduct is not limited to players on the court. Instead, there is the understanding that an entire community is accountable for the success of a team, not just the coach or the highest scoring players. As they say in acting: There are no small parts, just small actors. Everyone matters.

Contrast this model with our criminal justice system where a hypothetical man who abused his girlfriend is tried in court while none of the people who influenced him to hurt others are held accountable: not his mother for abusing him as a child—thereby making him immune to seeing or feeling pain—nor the kids who, by bullying him in school, taught him the perverse pleasure of power, nor his teachers for failing to create a nurturing learning environment where healthier values might be cultivated. Technical fouls on all of them, basketball might say.

Second, justice in basketball, especially the free throw, is victim-focused. While the free throw doesn’t give the victim of the foul a free pass, it does afford an opportunity to directly regain what was lost. So if, for instance, the defending team interfered with a three point shot so that a player missed the basket, then he or she gets three free throws to make up for it. In contrast, if the defending team interfered with a two point shot, the player gets two free throws. If the shot was successful despite the foul, the player still gets one free throw as an apology for inappropriate behavior.

This is quite different than what happens in the criminal justice system, where restitution is limited to jail time, probation, or community service for the offending party. You had a television stolen? The robber will do community service…and you are responsible for replacing your television. Your car was vandalized? The vandal gets a couple of weeks in the slammer, and you get some quality time with your insurance provider. You suffered a violent crime? The offender will go to jail, maybe even receive the death sentence, but nothing is done to restore your loss of trust, confidence, or health. That’s between you and your therapist.

Along those same lines, another difference between basketball and the criminal or retributive justice system is that basketball requires offending parties to acknowledge their violation and do something constructive to make it right, by giving the violated team an advantage when it comes to scoring. Hopefully, this provides an opportunity for the offender to learn from the mistake and use that as motivation to remain foul-less in the future.

But that is, sadly, not how it works in basketball, and perhaps this is where my loose analogy reaches its limits. In addition to the fact that fouls in basketball in no way approximate the devastation of rape, murder, or other exceedingly violent crimes, basketball teams have come to use fouling as an acceptable defensive strategy, not an error to be avoided. Take the Hack-a-Shaq, a technique wherein one team intentionally fouls a player on the other who has a low percentage of successful free throws. The idea is that purposefully fouling keeps the opposing team from scoring points during the game. In this scenario, fouling has become normalized, much like illegal music downloading or underage drinking on college campuses.

Still, there are some lessons worth taking from our mega-tall neighbors who bounce those orange balls. In many ways, the system I describe here resembles that proposed by restorative justice advocates, who seek to use practices like Circles, Victim-Offender Dialogue, and Family Group Conferences to lower recidivism and foster healing for criminals and victims alike. The idea is that if offenders were encouraged to make things right with the victim, then this would not only reduce the likelihood of further criminal activity but it would also be therapeutic for the one who was harmed. These models have shown themselves to be effective—especially with younger, non-violent criminals—so much so that New Zealand recently added Family Group Conferencing as an alternative to the court system for juveniles.

Of course, if juveniles don’t comply, they have to face a court trial and possible incarceration, just as the repeat fouler in basketball must be benched. The main distinction of the restorative system, therefore, is that jail is not the first port of call as it generally is in our criminal justice system; the emphasis is on restoration for the victim and the party responsible for harm with jail as a last resort. Likewise, in basketball, the goal is to get both parties back to playing, while giving an advantage to the fouled party; if necessary, the wrongdoer is benched.

While it may not be a perfect analogy, the basketball justice system does seem to hold insight about those things that ours lacks, like an emphasis upon community involvement, a focus on the victim, and a chance for the offender to make restitution. So maybe we should listen to the wisdom of basketball. After all, as everyone from Sarah Palin to Sister Helen Prejean agrees, the prison system needs a makeover. But maybe instead of phoning Ty Pennington, the first call should be to someone who’s done some time in court—the basketball court, that is.