Sussex DAAT Drug and Alcohol Conference

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Sussex DAAT Drug and Alcohol Conference

• Transcending care and control
• A role for restorative justice?
• Michael Shiner
• London School of Economics

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• Nigel South (2002 29)
• now would seem to be a very good time for
• policy makers and practitioners to think
• sociologically and for sociologists to think
• practically.

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Overview

• Community responses
• What is RJ?
• The advantages of RJ
• The risks of RJ
• RJ, drugs and alcohol
• Points of intervention

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Community responses

• Community as resource
• Community as window dressing
• Conflicts as property
• Community values

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What is RJ?

• A new criminal justice paradigm?
• Distinguish offender from offence
• Approach offences in a dynamic way
• Reintegrative and disintegrative shaming
• Communitarian
• Consider interests of victim and offender
• Importance of voluntarism
• Practicalities

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Advantages of RJ

• Positive evaluations
• Low recidivism rates
• Meaningful participation
• Higher victim satisfaction
• Flexibility
• Fits with procedural justice

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Risks of RJ
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RJ, drugs and alcohol

• Braithwaite
• So, restorative justice sidesteps questions of
  whether it is right or wrong to punish substance
  abuse with the following move. If substance abuse
  is part of the story of injustice, part of what
  is important to understand to come to terms with
  the injustice, then both the substance abuse and
  the injustice it causes are likely to be among
  the things participants will wish to see healed
  in the restorative process.
• one can be a liberal opponent of criminalizing
  victimless crime while supporting the
  criminalization of effects or forms of substance
  abuse that do endanger others. We can be opposed
  to prohibition and support drunk driving laws.

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Treatment and making amends

• Twelve steps
• Members made a list of all persons we had harmed
  and became willing to make amends to them all
  (step eight)
• Members made direct amends to such people
  wherever possible, except where to do so would
  injure them or others (step nine)

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Points of intervention

• Criminal justice settings
• Schools
• Youth service
• Drugs agencies
• Examples

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References

• Braithwaite, J. (1989) Crime, shame and
  reintegration, Cambridge University Press
• Braithwaite, J. (2001) Restorative justice and
  a new criminal law of substance abuse, Youth and
  Society, 33 (2) 227-248
• Roche, D. (2003) Accountability in Restorative
  Justice, Clarendon
• Shiner, M., Thom, B., MacGregor, S. with Gordon,
  D., and Bailey, M. (2004) Exploring Community
  responses to Drugs, Joseph Rowntree Foundation