Summary
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Opposition to RJ is often motivated by its supposedly fatal lack of punitive and ‘public’ force. Apologies, reconciliation, atonement, payment of damages etc. are regarded as informal or civil law-like remedies at best, lacking the supposedly essentially punitive character of criminal law measures, just as reducing the ‘resolution’ of crime to relationships of victims and offenders is taken to come down to misguided privatisation, or wrongheaded exclusion from criminal procedure of the rest of citizenship. Against such and other criticisms of RJ, basic ideas of ‘civilised criminal law’ may be developed. An attempt is made to base criminal procedure and punishment on principles of moral psychology transcending criminal law, concerning relationships between actorship, wrongful harm, resentment, apologies, retribution as reparation, and reconciliation. Reparation by offenders is regarded as essential for restoration of respect and self-respect. Punishment as mere infliction of pain must be done away with, to be replaced by penal servitude, in the sense of: reparation of harm done by offenders’ own efforts. Such penal servitude is taken to be the constructive core idea of retribution as integration of forfeit, punishment and restitution. Offenders’ pain is no more than a probably not unwelcome by-product, then, in restoration of original positions for all concerned. In this way, RJ may still be punitive in a sensible way. The essentially public nature of such civilised criminal law is expressed by the state’s coercion of penal servitude, to be determined in public trial and in the name of the people, as an expression of moral resentment against offenders and compassion with victims. Crimes against general interests may be compensated for by penal servitude as well. Still, the possibilities of informal criminal conflict resolution ought not to go unheeded, if apposite. Thus regarded, and apart from its much superior kinds of sanctions, civilised criminal law is not completely different from current criminal law, thus offering fruitful possibilities for piecemeal reform. Author's abstract.
Link: www.euforumrj.org/readingroom/Budapest/workshop9.pdf
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