Title: The%20Good,%20The%20Bad%20and%20the%20Community:%20Restorative%20Justice
1The Good, The Bad and the CommunityRestorative
Justice
- Dan Ellingworth
- Troubles of Youth
- 2nd February 2009
2Lecture Outline
- Principles and Theories of Restorative Justice
- The Referral Order and Youth Offender Panels
- Evaluation
3Restorative Justice a critique of traditional
justice
- Crime violation of the state
- Social injury result in another social injury
- Community represented by the State
- Dependence on professionals offender and victim
passive - No encouragement for repentance and forgiveness
4Traditional Justice
Offenders
The State
Problem breaking the law
5Restorative Justice
Offenders
Victims
Community
- Problem Conflict between offender, victim and
community
6Restorative Justice Definitions (?)
Restorative justice is a process whereby parties
with a stake in a specific offence resolve
collectively how to deal with the aftermath of
the offence and its implications for the
future. (Marshall, 1999)
- Crime violation of one person by another
- Offender encouraged to take responsibility
- Negotiation replaces adversarial style
- Focus on repair of social injury
- Direct involvement of participants
- Community involvement
7Restorative Justice Practices
Flexibility, Problem Solving, Voluntary
8Some Key Theorists
- Howard Zehr
- retributive justice and restorative justice seen
as diametrically opposed - emphasised benefits for victims, and the active
participant of offenders - not (initially) as concerned with issues of
community involvement - Nils Christie
- traditional justice stole the conflicts from
the injured parties advocated the return of
conflict to the two parties - a shift back to civil rather than criminal
justice - Martin Wright
- concerned to encourage the integration of
traditional and restorative justice - emphasised the importance of community
involvement as a way of appeasing calls to
public-interest more associated with traditional
justice - John Braithwaite
- reintegrative shaming
- a distinction drawn between alienating shaming
and reintegrative shaming
9Youth Offender Panels and Referral Orders
- Established by Youth Justice and Criminal
Evidence Act 1999 - Referral Orders
- given to a young person who pleads guilty to an
offence when it is their first time in court. - not given if offence is so serious that the court
decides a custodial sentence is absolutely
necessary, or the offence is relatively minor
where a fine or absolute discharge would suffice - Youth Offender Panel
- Two volunteers, plus a member of YOT
- A contract is drawn up with agreement between
offender and victim lasting between 3 months and
a year - The conviction is spent once the contract has
been successfully completed. - 6000 cases in 2006/7
10Aims
- Diversion
- early, non-stigmatising, interventions
- reduce the need for custody
- Reduced re-offending
- Demonstrating Impact of Offending
- challenging Techniques of Neutralization
(Matza) - Effective Remedies for Victims
- psychological and material
- Community Involvement
11Victims experiences of YOPs
- Crawford and Newburn (2003)
- Evaluation of pilot programmes
- Total 696 cases
- No victim - 128 cases
- Identifiable Victim 544 cases
- Victim Attended 71 cases (13)
- Victim contact not particularly effective
- (2005-6 87 of victims contacted 48 accepted)
- 53 of victims would have attended given the
opportunity
12Victims experiences of YOPs
- Initial reaction 30 voiced nervousness and
apprehension - Few victims expected a result most expressed a
hope for acknowledgement / apology - 35 thought should attend out of duty
- 43 thought victims should have a say in
resolution - 60 attended to see how they worked
13How sorry did you feel for the offender?
14Victims Respect for the CJS
15Evaluations of RJ initiatives
Shapland, J et al (2004) Implementing Restorative
Justice schemes Home Office Online Report 32/04
- Victim involvement higher where offender was
young - Little representation by the community
- Offenders admitted a lot or quite a lot of
responsibility for the offence in 60 of the
conferences observed, with 11 admitting only a
little or no responsibility. - Disapproval of the offence and shaming of the
offender in most meetings. Apologies almost
always offered, but offenders recognised this was
insufficient in serious offences. Explicit
forgiveness of offender rare. - Sherman and Strang (2008) Restorative Justice
(YJB) - Evidence of effective outcomes
- RJ is effective at reducing victim trauma and
stress - Inconclusive evidence about reduction in future
offending
16Limitations of RJ
- Reliant on voluntary cooperation
- what happens when one, two or all three parties
are unwilling to cooperate? - Always reliant on traditional justice where RJ
fails for one reason or another - Reliant on already existing degrees of community
integration - capacity for communities to be supportive and
re-integrating, rather than exclusionary are
dependent on a range of resources available to
different communities - Conflict with other CJ agendas (eg. ASBOs?)
17Key Issues in the development of RJ
- Defendants Rights
- wrongful convictions, and particularly
disproportionate punishments - overly punitive victims?
- Victims rights
- possibly left aggrieved
- actually there to serve a role more related to
the offender? - Truly Voluntary?
- Justice and Fairness
- comparability across different cases?