By: Elizabeth Elliott and Robert M Gordon, eds.    Cullompton:  Willan, 2005.  ISBN 1-84392-132-4; 1-84392-133-2


Canada has given much attention to restorative justice, so it was a good place to hold a conference and publish the proceedings.  These reflect the Canadian provenance, but include welcome contributions from other countries, including a non-Anglophone one (Belgium) – two if you count Québec. 

The contents are loosely grouped under four main headings.  Under ‘Youth and restorative justice’ (an offender-focused heading, since it is referring to young offenders, not victims), Lode Walgrave writes on mainstreaming restorative justice (R J).  He argues, not for the first time, that restoration is ‘ethically more acceptable than deliberately inflicting pain’ (p. 7), and warns against the danger of adding a ‘pinch’ of R J to an unreconstructed criminal justice system.  

Introducing a restorative approach into schools is one way of preventing the idea from being swallowed up by the criminal justice system, and the Australian pioneer Brenda Morrison shows how, unlike exclusion, it can encourage supportive relationships as well as control.  Given a whole-school approach it can handle serious incidents including bullying, assaults and a bomb threat.  Shame, however, needs careful handling:  it needs to be discharged, not converted to anger. 

The New Zealand system is outlined by Gabrielle Maxwell, although it is not, as she says, the only national restorative youth justice system (p. 69):  Austria has followed suit.  The New Zealand system, best practice guidelines and research findings are usefully summarized, with emphasis on the requirements outside the system, such as early intervention, mental health services, and not placing young people in situations where they bond with other offenders.  The process should be respectful, so that the young person is not stigmatized and feels genuinely remorseful (the latter, of course, can’t be guaranteed even by the best system).  But even in New Zealand there is room for improvement (p. 70).

Canada has a new Youth Criminal Justice Act (in force 2003).  Serge Charbonneau shows that it has restorative elements but does not mention the word, and is basically punitive.  He suggests the factors without which justice is not restorative, notably putting victims at the heart of the process.  

The second section, on aboriginal justice, will be most relevant in countries with indigenous minority populations, but raises general issues.  For example, Jonathan Rudin reminds us that some languages have no word for ‘guilty’ but ask people to take responsibility, and that aboriginal justice programmes suffer from ‘macho ministers’ who do not consult and have unrealistic expectations of speed – they  aren’t the only ones!  The criminal justice system is not uniform:  sometimes people have to be treated differently to achieve the same result (and vice versa – see Wright 1999:  chapter 5). 

Similarly, Australia is not the only place where ‘the state, caught in a shallow debate, fails to address the fundamental socially based flaws that arise from marginalisation and exclusion from power’, as John Boersig says (p. 125).  He adds that R J could be the way forward, but not if it fails to alter relationships of power based on race (or, he might have added, economic power).  

In the section on victims, Kathleen Daly, always a critical friend of R J, reports two studies.  One examined conferencing, which scored highly on procedural justice, but only 30 to 60 per cent of victims reported restorative features such as an offender showing remorse or understanding, and many experienced some distress.  After conferences which ended ‘on a high’ young people were significantly less likely to re-offend;  and in those which did not, the victim was more likely to be distressed.  This underlines that good training of facilitators is vital. 

The second study compared youth sex offending cases that went to court or to a conference.  Victims who went to a conference were better off, because there was always an admission of guilt, than those who went to court.  Conferences can revictimize, but less than court cases.  Summing up, Daly says:  ‘The potential of R J is that it opens up [an] opportunity for those who have offended to admit what they have done, without the potential risks associated with a court-imposed sentence’ (p. 165-6).  But she adds an important proviso:  without an intensive counselling programme for offenders, she would hesitate to support conferencing for these cases (pp. 171-2, n. 25). 

Other chapters deal with elder abuse, crimes of severe violence, and the role of insurance companies.  

The last section, on evaluation, begins with big claims for the system-wide restorative justice initiative in Nova Scotia.  They aim to get prosecutors to seek problem-solving options rather than aim solely for convictions;  regular surveys of C J S personnel and community leaders show some increased understanding of R J, but it still needs more strategic planning.  Programmes in Ottawa and Belgium are evaluated, and to conclude Howard Zehr proposes critical issues for evaluators.  

This review cannot do justice to all fifteen papers.  In sum, although like many such collections the book doesn’t really ‘hang together’, it contains some useful papers of general interest, with others on specialized topics which receive little coverage, and will therefore be a useful resource.

Reference

Wright, M (1999)  Restoring respect for justice.  Winchester:  Waterside Press.  

This review first appeared in the newsletter for the British Society of Criminology in May 2006.


Martin Wright
October 2006