Restorative Justice
Restorative justice programmes aims to help rebuild relationships between the offender, the victim, their family and the community. Such programmes attempt to improve the experience for the victim, as well as encouraging the offender to take responsibility for their crime.
Historically crime was “against the state”, however victims and their families often feel their needs and wishes are ignored. Restorative justice aims to redress this balance as victims are allowed to have a say on what happens to the offender. It provides victim with control and choice, a chance to ask questions and explain the impact of their crime to discourage re-offending. However, it can be a very distressing process for both the victim and the offender, and as details of the crime are brought up, it may be more traumatising than beneficial for the victim.
John Braithwaite (2004) ‘crime hurts, justice should heal’.
Key features of Restorative Justice:
- Focus on acceptance of responsibility for actions
- Not restricted to courtrooms
- Active (not passive) involvement of all parties
- Focus on positive outcomes
Memory Strategies for RJ:
HEART!
Heal and empower the victim
Empathise with victim
Active involvement from all parties
Rehabilitate rather than punish
Taking responsibility for the crime
OR
RERERE
- Responsibility accepted by offender
- Empathise with victim
- Remorse felt by offender
- Everyone has to be involved
- Rehabilitate rather than punish
- Empower the victim
Different techniques are used in order to help bring about restorative justice, including:
- face-to-face meetings between the offender and victim;
- direct mediation (a meeting between the offender and victim, but accompanied by a trained mediator to help manage their discussions and offer support);
- indirect mediation (the offender and victim do not meet face-to-face, but their communication is passed to each other via a mediator).
This is a great programme which shows a variety of examples of restorative justice:
Sherman and Strang (2007) A review of restorative justice and its effectiveness in preventing re-offending
Carried out a content analysis of 36 papers which compared re-offending rates of those who’d undergone restorative justice to those who had not.
RJ was especially effective with reducing re-offending in violent crimes and property crime such as burglary. It was not found to be effective in all cases/crimes, and appeared to be more effective in providing peace of mind or reducing post-traumatic stress for the victim than preventing re-offending. It was concluded that there was some support for the increased use of restorative justice, particularly with young or first time offenders.
Evaluation:
Strengths:
- Individual Differences – Restorative Justice is able to cater for the individual needs of the offender and the victim. For example the variations of RJ e.g. direct mediation, indirect mediation and face to face. In addition, the victim and offender will work with restorative counsellors to ensure that they have identified individual goals that they wish to get out of the process. Considering the needs of both offender and victim is likely to improve the success of the programme. This is because it is directly targeting the needs of each individual rather than a generic solution.
- Validity – Supporting research by Sherman & Strang (2007). This research uses a content analysis and compares those who have used RJ and those who have not. This enables the research to establish cause and effect between RJ and reoffending. However, the research does not consider the long-term reoffending rates. Many of the offenders may not have re offended at the point of data collection, or they might not have been caught, so appear to have not reoffended when they actually have!
- Holistic – This is an approach which aims to help both the victim and the offender. This could be deemed more beneficial than strategies that only deal with the offender e.g. custodial sentencing, anger management or behaviour modification.
- Usefulness – According to Shapland et al (2007) RJ could be more cost effective. They found that for every £1 spent on restorative justice, would save £8 through reduced reoffending. If this is the case, RJ could be a system that is worth more investment and research.
Weaknesses:
- Freewill – Relies on the offender showing some remorse. This level of freewill may mean that this system may be used to hurt the victim even more. In addition, RJ may not even be possible if the offender does not agree to participate. This could leave the victim feeling further victimised.
- Generalisability – Not generalisable to all types of crime for example Women’s Aid have called for a ban on the use of restorative justice in cases of domestic abuse. This is because in cases of domestic abuse, it is a typical cycle for the abuser to apologise and show remorse. However, this remorse is never genuine and the abuse continues. This could mean that the victim in these cases could be traumatised even further.
- Ethics – RJ may not always be successful. Some offenders or victims may go in with a negative intention in causing further destruction. This is because they could follow all the instructions and appear on the surface as engaging with the programme, but as soon as the meeting happens it could switch into something extremely negative. This could have extremely negative effects on the victim and could create negative attitudes towards the justice system.
- Applications – Can be quite time consuming. A number of meetings would need to take place first before the victim and offender meet.
- Social sensitivity – Maybe seen as a soft option. Although RJ would not be used as an alternative to prison in serious crimes, with less serious crimes people may view this as ineffective as it is not a punishment to say sorry.
Anger Management
Many prisoners have problems controlling their anger, which leads to violent behaviour. Anger needs to be controlled within a prison environment for the safety of staff and inmates. One way of achieving this aim is through anger management programmes. Anger Management programmes are a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), they aim to change the way a prisoner thinks and therefore the way they act.
Novaco (1975) – Anger Management:
COGNITIVE PREPARATION: Individuals are asked to identify situations when they get angry, common examples could be; feeling ignored, feeling challenged, feeling they have been treated unfairly. They are also taught how to identify physiological changes that they experience when becoming angry such as increased heart rate or muscle tension.
SKILL ACQUISITION: Participants learn a number of skills that help them to communicate with others more effectively in response to being provoked by others. These skills include:
- Cognitive Positive Self-talk: encouraging calmness.
- Behavioural Redirection: learning to walk away or direct anger in a more positive manner e.g. sport
- Meditation: learning how to remain in control of their emotions by counting to 10 or slow breathing.
APPLICATION PRACTICE: The participants practice applying these skills in situations where they feel aggressive – this is usually practiced through role play. They are encouraged to practice the techniques until it becomes second nature. Success negotiation of the role play would be met with positive reinforcement.
Ireland (2000) – Investigating whether anger-management courses work:
Ireland (2000) conducted a natural experiment comparing 50 prisoners who had completed CALM and a control group of 37 who hadn’t. The offenders were all matched on the following:
- Responses to a cognitive behavioural interview
- Wing Behavioural Checklist (WBC). This was completed by prison officers over 1 week. They rated their aggression on 29 different aggressive behaviours and all of these were rated 0= no evidence of 1= some evidence of, or 2= a lot of evidence of.
- A self-report questionnaire on anger management with 53 questions completed by the prisoners themselves.
The measures stated above were given to both groups before the programme and after the completion of the programme. Offenders who’d been part of a CALM programme rated themselves as less angry, and officers also tended to rate these offenders as less angry on the WBC. Overall, 92% showed improvement on at least one of the measures, 48% showed improvement on at least two “angry behaviour” measures. However, 8% deteriorated on two measures. In the short-term prisoners appeared to be helped by the programme, but in this case there is no evidence to whether the programme reduces reoffending. The fact that 8% got worse shows that this treatment is not effective for all offenders.
Evaluation of Anger Management:
- Holistic – behaviour, cognition and physical feeling of anger are addressed
- Usefulness – It has shown to be successful in reducing anger – Ireland (2000)
- Approaches – Compared to behaviourist programmes such as token economy, it addresses causes not just the symptoms – more likely to ensure a permanent change and lower rates of reoffending
Weaknesses:
- Usefulness – Long term effects can be questioned Blackburn (1993) argues that the use of role play may not reflect what happens in a real life situation, and may not address all aggressive triggers. For example on a Saturday night fuelled by alcohol.
- Usefulness – Does anger lead offending in all cases. There are lots of crimes which do not involve anger e.g. fraud, stealing, hacking and even murder in some cases e.g. murder through poison. Therefore, anger management cannot be generalised and used in all types of crime.
- Application – Can be expensive as it requires a trained professional and also requires a large number of sessions e.g. 8 2 hour sessions, some can even reach over 20 2 hour sessions! The programme puts in so much money and time and yet reoffending rates still occur. You could make an argument as to whether the cost is worth the small gains?
- Applications to real life – Blackburn (1993) argues that the use of role play may not reflect what happens in a real life situation, and may not address all aggressive triggers. The role play may not be taken seriously because the offender knows that it is not real. This may completely change in a real life circumstance that hasn’t been predicted in the role play. It would also be less effective in situations of drug or alcohol abuse, which leaves the individual unable to fully control themselves or think in a rational manner.
- Free will – Prisoners can choose whether or not to engage with the programme. This may mean they think it’s stupid and therefore it is unlikely to work.
CGS Psychology Blog: Mrs Harris 