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Title: The%20Good,%20The%20Bad%20and%20the%20Community:%20Restorative%20Justice


1
The Good, The Bad and the CommunityRestorative
Justice
  • Dan Ellingworth
  • Troubles of Youth
  • 2nd February 2009

2
Lecture Outline
  • Principles and Theories of Restorative Justice
  • The Referral Order and Youth Offender Panels
  • Evaluation

3
Restorative 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

4
Traditional Justice
Offenders
The State
Problem breaking the law
5
Restorative Justice
Offenders
Victims
Community
  • Problem Conflict between offender, victim and
    community

6
Restorative 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

7
Restorative Justice Practices
Flexibility, Problem Solving, Voluntary
8
Some 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

9
Youth 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

10
Aims
  • 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

11
Victims 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

12
Victims 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

13
How sorry did you feel for the offender?
14
Victims Respect for the CJS
15
Evaluations 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

16
Limitations 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?)

17
Key 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?
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