Empowerment and recognition is important for restoring ‘dominion’. Inviting the affected stakeholders of crime to engage in conscious reflection, choice, and action could strengthen their capabilities in dealing with difficulties in conflict resolution. Dominion and empowerment would then be restored and maintained. When they can experience and express their own concerns and consideration for those who are different from them in conflict resolution, the recognition of participants will increase. (Bush and Folger, 1994, cited in Johnstone, 2002: ch. 7)
The empowerment and recognition mentioned above are particularly important to victims because the traumatic and devastating effects of crime have caused damage their dominion and personal power. RJC gives them a right to participate in and control of the decision making process and it would help to restore their sense of autonomy and ensure they receive and experience justice. Consequently, it can fulfill part of the victims’ needs- which is, recognition and participation in the justice system.
Besides victims, participation in the justice system is also important to offenders. Since involvement of offenders in RJC provides them a right to give voice and choice of the outcome, they would feel they have been treated more fairly and more satisfied with the system. Consequently, they would be more willing to carry out and complete the agreement and reduce the possibility of reoffending.
Participation of other community members
Besides the direct stakeholders of offence, other community members should have a right to participate in the criminal justice process as one of the stakeholders. Since accountability is essential to the criminal justice system, the presence of the community members can enhance the inclusiveness and transparency of RJC to make it more publicly accountable and increase legitimacy. (Roche, 2003: 47-54)
Participation of community members is crucial to primary stakeholders because they can play a role to assist in a victim’s reparation and an offender’s reintegration. The scope of involvement of the community in RJC not only extends to distanced impartial community members in juries, but also to the family members or supporters of the victim and offenders (FGCs for example), youth advocators, police officers, social workers and other members of their local communities. Different from the decision making role of juries in the existing system, the role of the community is changed to active facilitators in the RJC. McCold (1996) has generalized their roles into five points:
1) Act immediately to protect victim and offender
2) Hold offenders accountable and insist on active involvement of participants in
the resolution process
3) Provide the local resources for victims and offender to seek their healings
4) Provide local education and serve as a model for peaceful resolution processes
5) Seek the systemic sources of recurring conflicts and encourage amelioration at their etiological source.
(McCold 1996:96, cited in Johnstone, 2002: ch. 7)
Participation of community is also important to the community itself because it can empower communities by developing its inherent capability to regulate itself and restore its confidence and inclination to preserve order. (Bush and Folger, 1994, cited in ibid.) It can also increase the interaction between members and promote a mutual respect and understanding of other members’ needs and problems. This would strengthen the community ties and enhance its solidarity and moral growth.
The role of legal professionals in RJC
In RJC, the roles of legal professionals will be diminished and their intervention would be kept to a minimal: Lawyers only appear in the background to provide legal advice before the conference rather than actively participate. Judges merely act as guardians to approve the mutual agreements of primary stakeholders in ensuring these agreements would not violate the public interest and the public standards of justice. In most situations, the role of professionals remains minimal and judges rarely overrule the agreements of primary stakeholders.
The role of the third party- mediators
Although there is still a relatively neutral party which is known as mediator involved in RJC, his/her role and power would be completely different from the role of judges in the existing system. Instead of having the power to decide the sentences of offenders, the mediator’s role is to smooth the negotiation progress and balance the power of the primary stakeholders in order to reach a mutually acceptable agreement on what the offender should undertake. The mediators of RJC are facilitators rather than decision makers, therefore the decision making process will be vested in the hands of primary stakeholders.
As what I have suggested before, providing affected parties of crime an opportunity to participate in the system is crucial to the stakeholders and the wider community because it has the potential to create empowerment and recognition of victims thus helping them restore dominion.
If there is no active participation of primary stakeholders and other members of the community in the criminal justice system, these benefits and goals can never be achieved. Victims’ needs would remain unmet, offenders would remain alienated in the punitive system, and the damages to all community members would never be recovered.
Reparation
Reason for reparation
As what I have discussed in the previous section, it is important for the justice system to respond to victims’ needs because they are the most affected people of crimes and they have significant contribution to the justice system. If meeting the needs of victims is one of the important concerns of the criminal justice system, it comes to another question- besides recognition and participation, what do victims really want?
As we know, crime causes a combination of physical, material, psychological, and emotional damages. These damages could have long term negative impacts on victims, affect the relationship between victims and the community, and damage the social harmony in the long run. Therefore, reparation should be prioritized on victims’ list of needs.
Problems of the existing justice system-insufficient reparation to victims
The criminal justice system had been reformed by establishing victim-reparation oriented schemes, such as introducing the use of compensation order and providing state-run or NGOs sponsored victim reparation schemes to deal with the aftermath of crime on victims. However, it has been criticised by Barton (1996) that these programmes are poorly funded and ‘are not usually associated in any way with the judicial processing of the offence which resulted in the injury’. (Strang, 2001: 184)
Although these reparation schemes have been improved in recent years, they are only limited to repair victims’ material and physical losses, while the most serious loses, like emotional and psychological damages, are still regularly neglected by the impersonalized justice system. Therefore, it has been frequently criticised by many restorative justice advocators that these reparations to victims are inadequate to meet the true needs of victims.
Suppression of emotions and communication between offenders and victims
One of the reasons for the criminal justice system failing to repair the psychological effects of crime is its impersonalised nature, which tends to suppress victims’ emotions as it provides no communication between victims and offenders. In this impersonalized system, two facts are highlighted: Victims are unlikely to believe that ‘they have been able to express their suffering, emotions, find understanding and sympathy for their experience’ (Llywellyn and Howse, 1999, cited in Roche, 2003: 8). On the other hand, offenders also have limited opportunity in expressing themselves during the trial due to the court procedure and setting. The lack of expression and communication between these two parties not only deprived a victim’s experience of justice (Johnstone, 2000; Pratt, 2000, cited in Johnstone, 2002) but also restricts his/her opportunities of reparation. What is more problematic is that it could polarize the two parties into a hostile position and could hinder rather than enhance the resolution of conflicts between the two parties.
Reparation on victims by RJC
By contrast, RJC is held in a less formal setting, which could provide more rooms for both parties to join together to express themselves freely for a more direct communications.
The benefit of communication between victims and offenders can be analysed in different stages:
First, victims are given the opportunities to express their emotions and this could help repairing their emotional damages. (Zehr, 1990)
Second, victims are given chances to express the personal impact of offences; it could influence the offenders to repent their accountability, which is an important step for making offenders to provide further reparations to victims.
Third, in addition to victims, offenders would also be given a chance to explain (not excuse) their acts and answer victims’ questions about why they were victimized and other matters. It could help changing victim’s perception on offenders from the threatening, all-powerful figures, which is in line with the public stereotypes to an ordinary vulnerable person. Consequently, a face to face meeting between offenders and victims would repair victims’ emotional damages, i.e. fear towards offenders and crimes.
Fourth, after offenders have repented their accountability and provided apology, if victims could provide forgiveness in response, it could repair victims’ psychological harms. As Strang argues, providing opportunity for victims to forgive could relieve the burden of victims’ anger and bitterness resulted from the unacknowledged emotional damages. (Strang, 2001)
Reparation on damaged relationship between offenders and victims
The process of ‘apology and forgiveness’ not only repairs victims’ emotional damages. More importantly, it could also act as a‘symbolic reparation’ to reconcile the damaged relationship between victims and offenders (Retzinger and Scheff, 1996: 316, cited in Strang, 20001: 186), which is a crucial foundation to restore social harmony. Although the reparation effect of ‘apology and forgiveness process’ may not completely repair the relationship between victims and offenders in idealistic way, as Arendt (1958) argued, it would minimally reduce the possibility of escalating the hostile relationship between the two parties. (ibid.)
Material reparation on victims
As we discussed earlier, what is harmful about crime is the psychological damages which outweigh the physical or material damages caused. However, the importance of material damages should not be under-emphasized.
In the existing justice system, most of the compensations, as described in this paper, are mostly provided by the state or NGOs rather than by the offenders. Although the use of community service order can require offenders to carry out compensational works, due to the impersonal nature of the existing system, those works are mostly carried out for the sake of the community and rarely for the victims who were harmed directly. As a result, the reparation value to victims is very limited.
As I have argued before, crime is a violation of a person(s) by another person(s). In applying this principle to reparation, offenders, rather than the state or NGOS, should be responsible for carrying out material compensation to victims. By receiving monetary or service compensations from offenders, victims’ psychological and relational damages can be repaired and this would benefit both the victims and the community.
Despite there are some criticisms that material compensations from offenders in RJC are less financially rewarding than those they could received from the NGOs or the state (Strang, 2001: 185), we should not simply devalue offender’ reparations to victims. According to many victims literatures, monetary or material compensation was not always the first priority of victims’ needs, but what more crucial to them is the symbolic value of compensation- the gesture of responsibility and offenders’ wrongdoings. This symbolic value of compensation is crucial to victims because offenders have wronged victims and so owe them a debt, victims would feel that it is necessary for the offenders to compensate their wrongdoings. Therefore, by putting offenders out to carry out reparation for victims could help to restore the victims’ devastated sense of justice.
Reparation to community
The symbolic value is not only vital for victims, but also important to offenders and society. Since crime is a lowering moral tone of offender, if the justice system fails to show the gesture of wrongdoings, the lowering of moral tone would become a contagion of evil example and damage the moral standard of the society. Showing the gesture of offenders’ wrongdoings through their reparations could help to reverse the rot of offenders, and turn the lowering of the moral tone resulting from the crime around in society. Despite in many cases, offenders’ reparation cannot expunge the harm-done to society; we should not ignore its symbolic value.
Reparation on offenders by carrying out reparation
Some people may argue that RJC mainly focuses on the benefits of victims and the reparation values to other parties are ignored. As I stated in last paragraph, offenders carrying out reparation would benefit not only the victims, but also the community. Furthermore, during the reparation process, offenders themselves can be benefited as well - they could be reformed and reintegrated to the community by carrying out reparation to victims.
The process of reparation can produce a reformative and reintegrative effect on offenders in many ways:
First, through their attempts to repair the harms they have caused, offenders can come to realize the true extent of those harms, and it is the first crucial step for reform and reintegration.
Second, carrying out reparative work may also help repairing offenders’ emotions, because the reparation work carried out by the offenders could ease their remorse after they have repented their accountability of their wrongdoings.
Third, by repairing the harms the offenders have caused, it would ease the anger and indignation from the victims and the public, and subsequently, it would change their perception on the offenders from negative to more positive, their attitude from hostile to more respectful, thereby paving the way for the reintegration of offenders into the community.
In the next section, I will further discuss how RJC helps offenders to reintegrate into the community and how the reintegration process helps to reform offenders and restore the social harmony.
Reform and Reintegration of offenders
In responding to offender’s wrongdoings, RJC aims to repair the victim’s damages in ways that will also facilitate the offender’s reformation and reintegration into society. Like victim reparation, reintegration are said to be an important approach to reconcile conflicts.
Why do we need to reintegrate offenders to community?
As we know, offenders have caused harmful damages to victims and the society. Why do we still have to reintegrate them to the community? There are couples of reasons for having the need to strengthen their ties with community, here I have summarized them as follow:-
Although offenders have caused harms and unrests to the community, they should not be simply viewed as ‘social outcasts’ and be ostracized from society. It is a fact that no matter what they have done to other members of the society, the community still has a continuing relationship with them. We cannot simply segregate them as outsiders as punishment and act in a totally hostile manner towards them.
It is morally inappropriate to use ‘punitive segregation’ to a fellow member of the community, because ‘we owe them compassion as well as moral indignation’. (Moberly, 1968, cited in Johnstone, 2002. ch. 5) But more importantly, ‘punitive segregation’ is also technically inappropriate for offenders because isolating offenders from communities would lead to stigmatization. This process, for some offenders is almost irreversible. (Erikson 1962, cited in Braithwaite, 1989) People who have been labeled as deviants would find themselves isolated from normal social interactions. Consequently, they would seek solace and communality in deviant subcultures, in which their deviant status is seen in a positive light and they can receive acceptance and support. Once offenders have put themselves in such a subculture, they are more likely to commit further offences simply to maintain their deviant status and identity. Moreover, ‘punitive segregation’ would decrease the opportunity to influence them to change as the community provides no supervision or control on offenders. As a result, this punishment not only fails to reform offenders, but increases the possibility of re-offending in future.
The existing justice system fails to reintegrate offenders with community
As we know, reintegration is essential to prevent recidivism; but does the existing system pay sufficient attention to an offender’s reintegration? Judging from research and related studies, the answer appears to be negative. In the existing system, there is an increasing use of custodial sentences , which would isolate and alienate offenders from society. This can also be said of alternatives which, although not entirely punitive, give little consideration to rebuilding the offender’s community ties. An offender can perform community service or attend probation, but these sanctions only offer few opportunities to convey their repentance, and the community is denied the chance to show their acceptance or understanding of them.
Why does the exiting system fail to reintegrate offenders?
The reason why sentences in the existing system give little attention to reintegration of offenders is because it is ‘retribution justice’ oriented. It demands offenders to repay to the society by punishment- this is, an eye for an eye concept (Zehr, 1990: 146), and reintegration is out of the scope of this system.
How does the RJC reintegrate offenders?
Since the nature of RJC is to ‘restore social harmony’, it concerns reparation of social connections rather than punishment. As Martha Minow (1998: 92) stated, ‘Restorative justice emphasizes the humanity of both offenders and victims. It seeks repair of social connections and peace rather than retribution against offenders.’ (Roche, 2003: 27)
Instead of punishing offenders, RJC emphasizes the importance of strengthening their ties with the community. In order to reintegrate offenders, the first step starts with having them acknowledging their wrongdoings. While demonstrating their wrongdoings, steps will be taken to ensure that those who admit responsibility for a crime are not permanently stigmatized as criminals. Hence, rather than focusing solely on the criminal act, RJC will maintain the other identities of offenders and remain recognition of their membership in the community. Equal attention is given in encouraging offenders to compensate and repair the harm done to their victims. By making amends, offenders can gain respect and acceptance from the victims and the community in general.
Repent accountability
The first and most important step of offender reintegration is to get offenders to truly repent their behavior. If not, it would be difficult for them to reform and gain the acceptance from both the victim and the community.
Many offenders, particularly juvenile offenders, may not acknowledge the consequences of their behavior and would use different neutralization techniques to deny their responsibility. However, the setting and language of condemnation of the impersonalized justice system does little to acknowledge offenders about the consequences of their actions and break down their neutralization because the establishment of guilt is governed by elaborated legal definitions and rules, and victims and offenders are segregated in the professional domain settings.
By contrast, with the presence of victims in RJC to tell the offender face-to-face about the impact of the said crime on them, it is more likely that the offender would be able to acknowledge their harm-done to victims, and decrease the likeliness of offenders to deny their accountability of the offence and possibility of reoffending in future.
In addition, since the establishment of guilt in the existing justice system is carried out by the Crown or the state, the transmission of disapproval message is from ‘above’ to offenders. (Christie, 1998, cited in Johnston, 2002) The use of coercive power might not make offenders repent their accountability of the offence but increase resistance on them.
In comparison, in RJC whether to accept the responsibility or not depends on the offender’s own free will, and it would be more likely for them to repent their accountability of the offence. Moreover, the victims’ statements could influence offenders’ family and friends to persuade offenders to accept their accountability. Since the disapproval message is not coming from the above, but from people whom the offenders care about and who care about them, it is more effective, convincing and it creates less resistance from offenders to repent the accountability of offence while comparing to having condemnation from a distant party. Hence, the way of expressing disapproval from offenders’ supporters would be more respectful and create less stigmatizing on offenders.
Reintegration-shaming offenders without stigmatization
While demonstrating their wrongdoings, it is unavoidable for offenders to experience shame and remorse after they have accepted their accountability. Some scholars, like Duff (1992) and Daly (1999), argue that RJC is no different to ‘retributive justice’ because both systems would have shaming effect, which would inflict pain as punishment and carry stigmatization on offenders. (Walgrave, 2001) However, this argument mis-conceptualises shaming process in RJC, because they have neglected the most important process of the RJC- ‘the reintegration ceremony’.
In the existing justice system, the establishment of guilt is a ‘one sharp end’ shaming ceremony with no reintegration measure to decertify the deviance label for preventing stigmatization. During the establishment of guilt, it would use sharp ‘front-end’ process to certify their deviant to degrade the whole personality of offenders; once they have been labeled as criminal, the label would be attached to them, while other identities would be completely excluded in the shaming process. In the words of Braithwaite and Mugford (1994: 142), the process of guilt establishment in the existing system has been summarized as ‘disapproval-degradation-exclusion’. Since the existing system does not have any measures to safeguard the other identities of offenders, the shaming effect and the stigmatization that caused from the guilt establishment are infinite and irreversible.
By contrast, in RJC shaming is not the end product but a means to influence offenders to repent their accountability. The shaming process in RJC focuses on the offender’s criminal behavior without the offender being the sole protagonist. This process not only safeguards offenders from the stigmatization effect, but more importantly, also provides a crucial step for further reintegration. Thus, RJC provides an opportunity and a safe environment for offenders to ‘share and communicate’ the shame, instead of hiding or denying it. The damage to the bond between the offender and other participants would then be repaired. (Retzinger and Scheff, 1996: 318-19, cited in Johnstone, 2002: ch. 6)
Although there is no guarantee that victims and other participants will shame the offender’s behavior without degradation and humiliation of offenders, we should not degrade the idea of ‘reintegrative shaming’ as punishment simply because of miscarries in a couple cases. To overcome this problem, the involvement of neutral mediator can monitor the negotiation process to ensure that criminal behavior, rather than offender themselves, is the focus of shaming and offenders and others are treated with respect to minimize the risk of stigmatization.
Reintegration- Reparation from offenders
After offenders repented their accountability of offences, the next step of reintegration is to provide compensation to repair victims’ damages. As what I have illustrated in the reparation section, offenders can acknowledge their harm done by carrying out reparation work, which is an important step of reintegration. Hence, the reparative works from offenders can ease the hostility of victims and the community in exchange of respect and acceptance, which is crucial for paving the way to their complete reintegration into the community.
Reintegration- decertification, social support and accountability
Although RJC has required offenders to do a lot for paving the way towards reintegration, if the society and victims refuse to re-accept them, reintegration of offenders will never succeed, and the shaming effect will continue to affect offenders. In order to terminate shaming and truly reintegrate offenders with the community, as Braithwaite (1989) argues, it is necessary for victims and the community to show forgiveness to decertify offenders’ criminal label and resume their status as normal citizen to let them rejoin the community.
In order to ensure offenders not re-offending in future after their criminal labels have been removed, and to ensure their smooth reintegration within the community, social support and informal control are particularly essential. To achieve these goals, the ‘circle of support’ would have positive function to provide social and practical support to offenders for rejoining the community, and it would also monitor offenders’ behavior to ensure offenders would not re-commit crimes to endanger the community.
Although punishment is not the main concern of RJC, it does not mean being soft on crime. To regain full membership of the community, offenders must be held accountable before whom they have harmed. They must show a willingness to repair the harm they have caused and they must show that they repent. They must also agree to whatever measures the community deems reasonable to ensure that they do not further endanger its members.
Limitation of the RJC
It has been stated that the RJC is a better way of dealing with the aftermath of a crime with a more positive effect on all stakeholders and the community at large. Yet, like any other system and as pointed out by critics, it inevitably has limitations. The limitations of the RJC include the voluntariness of the participants, the level of resources and skills which are required in community involvement, the inequality of power between victims, offenders and communities, the types of the offences and the age and previous criminal records of offenders.
Although the RJC has limitations, they should not be the reason to reject the whole idea. In order to improve the RJC, some restorative advocators have provided constructive recommendations to overcome these problems. They suggest that the voluntariness of participants and the level of resources and skills of community involvement can be addressed by building community support strategies: for example, the state agencies can utilise real experience of the RJCs in public education and promotion to provide better understanding of restorative justice and consequently increase the willingness of involvement and support from the community. These agencies can also provide technical assistance and support to improve the level of resources and skills in the implementation of the RJC.
Although some restorative justice advocators argue that not every criminal case is applicable to the RJCs, particularly for serious offences, older offenders and those with previous criminal records; in responding to these limitations, Marshall (XXXX) has provided a more positive interpretation: he believes that every offender should have an equal opportunity to participate in the RJC and make reparation to victims and the community. He goes on to state that this is because the biased selection of offenders in the RJC will decrease the opportunities for every offender to remedy their wrongdoings, which is unfair to victims in these cases. Thus, there are numerous researches have confirmed that such practice is successful with adults as with juveniles, with recidivists as with first-time offenders, and in serious cases as in minor ones. (Marshall, XXXX: 24-25) Since victims’ interest is the priority consideration in the restorative justice system, types of offences, age and previous criminal records of offenders should not affect the chances of offenders’ participation and victims to receive reparation from them.
Conclusion
This paper has discussed the existing justice system and compared it with the Restorative Justice System, and highlighted their various advantages and disadvantages. Drawing from the research illustrated in this paper, RJC appears to have constructive impacts on all primary stakeholders and the community at large. By involvingvictims, offenders and other community members together, impact of the crime can be discussed and procedure can be developed to repair the harm done.
In general, there appears to be a good number of positive responses from participants of RJC and a vast majority of them found the restorative justice experience more satisfactory, fair, and helpful in dealing with the aftermath of crime. The benefits of RJC mentioned by academics and participants include its ability to alter the imbalance of power between different parties to make the criminal justice system more responsive to victims’ needs, its influence to reform offenders, and the enhancement of the social and moral development of the community by implementing RJC.
Although the discussion is in favour of RJC and its principles, we should be aware that no system is perfect. In order to achieve its full potentials and to overcome its limitations and shortcomings, more empirical research is necessary in order to evaluate and refine the system. Combining the positive elements of restorative and existing justice systems will create a better system that suits the best interests of the victims, offenders, and society.
Bibliography
Braithwaite, J. (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration, London: Cambridge University Press.
Braithwaite, J. (1995) “Inequality and republican criminology” in Hagan, J. and Peterson, R. (eds.) Crime and inequality. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Braithwaite, J. and Mugford, S. (1994) “Conditions of Successful Reintegration Ceremonies: Dealing with Juvenile Offenders.” British Journal of Criminology, 34(2)
Christie, N. (1977) “Conflicts as Property.” British Journal of Criminology, 17(1)
Marshall, T. (1999) “Restorative Justice: An Overview.” London: Home Office
Strang, H. (2001) “Justice for Victims of Young Offenders: The Centrality of Emotional Harm and Restoration.” in Morris, A and Maxwell, G. (eds.) Restorative Justice for Juveniles: Conferencing, Mediation and Circles. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Walgrave, L. (2001) “On Restoration and Punishment: Favourable Similarities and Fortunate Differences.” in Morris, A and Maxwell, G. (eds.) Restorative Justice for Juveniles: Conferencing, Mediation and Circles. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Zehr, H. (1999) Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press.
Johnstone, G. (2002) Restorative Justice: Ideas, Values, Debates. London: Willan.
Umbreit, M., Coates, R. and Vos, B. (2002) The Impact of Restorative Justice Conferencing: A Review of 63 Empirical Studies in 5 Countries. St Paul, MN: University of Minnesota.
Roche, D. (2003) Accountability in Restorative Justice. Oxford: Open University Press.
Umbreit, M. (1994) Victim meets offender: the impact of restorative justice and mediation. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press
Internet Source:
http://
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/lcj/family/ch2.pdf
h
Victims have a crucial role to play in the criminal justice system. Not only they are active in reporting the offence to the police, they are also the major agent in detecting and prosecuting the offender. They provide evidence of the circumstances of the offence, identification of the offender, and injuries and losses sustained. If they do not make a statement to the police, there will be little chance of a guilty plea and probably no prosecution. And if they do not give evidence at court in a contested case, the defendant will almost certainly be acquitted.
For example, an outcome may be acceptable to the parties involved in its negotiation, yet fail to address some community concerns such as the likelihood of further offences which would threaten the public safety.
According to Braithwaite, ‘defined upper limits’ refer to orders or sanctions that would exceed what the formal courts would typically impose. (Braithwaite, 1994, 203-4 and 1999: 105, cited in Roche, 2003)
Those offenders going through mediation indicated being more satisfied with the criminal justice system than those going through traditional court prosecution (Davis, 1980; Umbreit and Coates, 1992; Umbreit, 1995) For example, a recent multi-site study of victim offender mediation in the US found an aggregate offender satisfaction rate of 76% with the RJC. (Umbreit, Coates and Vos, 2001, cited in Umbreit et al., 2002) These high levels of satisfaction with victim offender mediation also translated into relatively high levels of satisfaction with the criminal justice system.
Looking across RJC studies reviewed, it appears that approximately 80-90% of the agreement between offenders and victims are reported as completed. (Collins, 1984; Coates and Gehm, 1985, Perry, Lajeunesse and Woods, 1987; Umbreit, 1988; Galaway 1989; Umbreit, 1991; Umbreit and Coates, 1992; Warner, 1992; Roy, 1993; Evje and Cushman, 2000; Umbreit,
Coates and Vos, 2001, cited in Umbreit et al., 2002) For example, one England based study indicate those participating in RJC has a higher completion rate of agreement with those who did not (Umbreit and Coates, 1992.) In that instance, 81% of participating offenders completed their contracts contrasted with 57% of those not in the RJC, which is a statistically significant finding.
Family group conference (which is also known as FGC) is one of RJCs and is first started in New Zealand. It is a meeting at a time and place chosen by the family and attended by the young offenders, the family (including the wider family), the victim, the police, the youth advocate where one has been appointed and whom any other people form the whom family wish to have present. It is arranged by the YJC who act as the mediator between the family and the police. (Maxwell and Morris, 1994; cited in http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/lcj/family/ch2.pdf)
In the initial stage of impact of crime, victims would have feeling of confusion, helpless, terror, and these feelings would be accompanied with anger, anxiety and feeling of self-doubt. Because of the fear of the crime, it would lead to distrust of other members of society and trying to distance form the community. The anger of the crime would create hostility to the offender, or in some extreme situations, they may hostile to the society, which would lead to victims to seek for revenge. If the criminal justice system fails to respond to these psychological damages, the broken relationship between society and victims would become a vicious cycle and cause more and more conflicts within the society; consequently, it would further damage the social harmony. (Zehr, 1990)
Studies done by RISE in Australia have shown that victims after RJC had less fears (7% after conferences vs. 16% before conferences) towards offenders comparing to before conferences; and victims after RJCs felt less fear about re-offending than before conferences (3% after conferences vs. 19% before conferences) When victims were asked whether they believed their offender would repeat the offence on a victim other than themselves, 59% of the court victims thought they would comparing to one third of conference victims having the same answer. (Strang, 2001: 188). This finding is coherent with the result of Umbreit (1994) and Umbreit and Roberts (1996) studies that victims taking part in the RJC were only half as likely to fear re-victimization as those not doing so. (Marshall, 1999: 18)
According to RISE studies, it was about 65% said they felt angry before RJC. While comparing to about 27% afterwards, it is a statistically significant difference.(Strang, 2001; 189)
It is evident in both UK and US studies that the symbolic value of material compensation means more to victims than merely money: In Marshall and Merry’s (1990) review of British victim-offender-mediation programs, some victims would prefer symbolic reparation, preferably apology, rather than merely material compensation. (Strang, 2001: 185) In the US, Umbreit (1994) found that about 25% of victims who had experienced RJC view the gesture of responsibility far outweigh the material compensation.
Once a person is stigmatized with a deviant label, a self-fulfilling prophecy unfolds as others respond to the offender as deviant. He/She experiences marginality, he/she is attracted to subcultures which provide social support for deviance, he/she internalized a deviant identity, he/she experiences a sense of injustice at the way he/she is victimized by agents of social control his/her loss of respectability may push him/her further into an underworld by causing difficulty in earning a living legitimately, Deviance then becomes a way of life hat is difficult to changed and is rationalized as a defensible lifestyle within the deviant cultures. (Braithwaite, 1989: 18)
It has been suggested that punishment based programs on average lead to a twenty-five percent increase in reoffending rate as compared with control groups. (McGuire and Priestly, 1995:10, cited in Walgrave, 2001: 27)
According to the statistics of offenders sentenced for all offences from 1992 to 2001, the use of immediate custody has been increased from 58.3 thousands to 106.6 thousands. (Cited from lecture notes of criminal justice policy provided by Judith Rumgay)
In order to commit offences and live with their behavior, offenders often construct elaborate rationalizations for their actions. Braithwaite has drew upon the work of Sykes and Mazta (1957) to explain and summarized their rationalization techniques into five points: 1) denial of victim 2) denial of injury 3) condemnation of the condemners 4) denial of responsibility 5) appeal to higher loyalties (Braithwaite, 1999, cited in Johnstone, 2002, ch. 5)
In the Oxford University July 2002 report focused on 46 Youth Justice Board-funded RJ projects across England found that there is 70% of offenders after RJC have better understood the impact of the offence on the victim. (cited in )
According to the research by Messmer (1992), many offenders found that victims’ suffering and emotional experience could challenge and destroy their excuses to explain their behavior. (Marshall. 1999: 18)
Study results relating to reoffending in the RJC are quite promising. The RJC research of Dignan (1992) and Warner (1993) have shown a little positive effect on recidivism (Marshall, 1999: 18), while Mier et al. (2001) contend that the RJC had a ‘significant impact on reoffending both in terms of the offence frequency and offence seriousness. (Umbreit et al. 2002) This finding is coherent with the research in the US by Umbreit and Coates (1992) that youth involved in RJC had significantly lower reoffending rate than those who did not. (ibid.)
According to Braithwaite (1999), the use of coercive power fails to influence offenders to accept their accountability of the offence because they view the coercive power as control to limit their freedom, which would lead to them acting contrary to the direction of control and create resistance on them. (Johnstone, 2002: ch. 5)
A study of FGC in Woodbury, Minnesota between 1995 and 1999 had shown that FGC had a significant positive difference in reoffending rate. ( 33% of the conferencing youth reoffended compared to 72% of the non-conferencing youth) (Hines, 2000, cited in Umbreit at al. 2002)
Circle of support (also known as circle of support and accountability) have been widely used in Canada and recently in the UK for ex-offenders. In the circle of support, it has about four to six ex-offenders as core members, with the other community members and professionals (i.e. social workers) to provide them social and practical supports for helping them to rejoin the community. The circle also plays as monitoring role to confront offenders when their behavior is getting risky and hence reassuring the community that any signs of dangerous behavior will be picked up. This idea is to ensure ex-offenders can rejoin the community safely, meanwhile to protect other community members to live with them safely. (Johnstone, 2002)
It has been suggested by the research of Quaker that the 'circles of support' have been proved to cut the rate of re-offending of offenders in Canada and to help communities feel safer. (cited in http:// www.quaker.org.uk/peace/qpsdocs/restjust.pdf+rate+accept+accountability+restorative+justice+conference+UK&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)
The voluntariness of participants is particularly crucial to the outcome of the RJC. If any direct participation is unwilling, it would increase the burden and harm on both primary stakeholders, difficult for both parties to be satisfied and feel fair with the outcome and restorative goals will be difficult to be achieved. (Marshall, XXXX: 24)
It has been argued that the use of the RJCs in family violence, sexual violence cases are not always appropriate. The particular dynamics of these cases, including the power imbalances inherent to these type of offending, may pose significant risks to the physical and emotional safety of the victim, and the imbalance of power may affect the fairness of the outcome of the RJCs. Family violence offending in particular, is often cyclical and reflect deeply entrenched attitudes and beliefs. Offenders may be more manipulative and have offended seriously and repeatedly. A one-off intervention may therefore not be effective or safe to victims and offenders. (Cited in www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/courts/tearawhakatika20.pdf)
