Book Review: Informal Reckonings: Conflict resolution in mediation, restorative justice and reparations

By Andrew Woolford and R S Ratner.  Abingdon:  Routledge-Cavendish, 2008. 
ISBN 978-1-904385-86-8 pbk, £19.99; 978-0-415-42934-4 hbk, £75.00. 

Nils Christie accused the justice professionals of ‘stealing’ the conflict between citizens;  but they may be only petty offenders compared with Mr Big, the State.  The danger is that the attempt to restore the conflict to its owners is being subverted by the state, in order to de-fuse the challenge to its values.  The takeover can be resisted, but the restorative justice movement will have to show both awareness of the problem and determination to uphold restorative values. 

Restorative justice is supposed to empower people to resolve their own conflicts;  but will the State let go?  Many writers have discussed how the process affects individuals, but Woolford and Ratner consider the position of the informal process in relation to the formal procedures of the official system. 

They look in turn at community mediation, mainly between neighbours; restorative justice, in the field of criminal justice;  and reparations, especially after major civil conflicts.  There is a brief history of each.  Each is then examined through the lens of ‘governmentality’, which ideally shapes the consciences of individuals rather than control them by the oppressive mechanism of the state, and there is a useful summary of Habermas’s discourse ethics.  But in a neoliberal context this may result in ‘affirmative’ (system-strengthening) outcomes:  people are ‘empowered’ to conform, rather than to transform their situation. 

The ideal of informal justice is in danger of being colonized by ‘the system’ into an ‘informal-formal justice complex’ in which, unless the informal stands up firmly for its values, the formal dominates it and wants to professionalize it with legal reasoning, systems of accreditation and the like. 

Restorative justice faces similar problems especially as it is dependent on the formal system for referrals and often for funding.  However, it is possible for an open-minded facilitator to ‘provide the offender with the opportunity to speak honestly and be heard’ (p. 88).  More communitarian restorative justice would encourage participants to address the broader context of the offence, which could ‘augment a sense of political agency’ (p. 89).  The authors point out that if an offender has specific needs, the community has an obligation to provide them;  they might have pointed to the example of Zwelethemba, in South Africa, which has taken steps in that direction (Froestad and Shearing 2007). 

Reparation after conflict suffers similar tensions, which are all the greater because often the state is both ‘a perpetrator of injustices’ and a ‘facilitator of justice’ (p. 119).  Some cases call for imaginative symbols, such as creating a truth and reconciliation commission or turning South Africa’s infamous Robben Island into a museum;  but it may take a law to make it happen. 

As Habermas argues, there should be ‘communicative action’ to root out ‘those elements of collective existence that have permitted tragedies such as Auschwitz to occur’ (p. 108);  a ‘counter-memory’ (Foucault) should provide an alternative telling of the past.  Another example might be the use of Guantanamo Bay, ‘extraordinary rendition’ and torture:  although on a vastly smaller scale than the Holocaust, they may, like Auschwitz, leave a lasting scar on the history of the country responsible. 

Unlike some scholars, Woolford and Ratner do not only deconstruct but suggest how informal justice can resist being taken over by the informal-formal justice complex.  Mediators can challenge social injustice;  restorative justice facilitators can help participants to transform the situation from within, by non-coercive communication.  They can resist being ‘inundated with a juridical ethos’ (p. 125), and be ‘seedbeds for oppositional activity that can alter patterns of political decision-making and economic inequality’ while ‘resisting modes of self-governance … consistent with neoliberal domination’ (p. 126).

The book is clearly structured, and repays careful reading (and needs it, although technical terms are explained); some more examples might have been helpful.  It is recommended especially for academic libraries.  At a time when in England precisely the pressure for professionalization that they describe is taking place, and the European Union is considering whether to support restorative justice in a supportive way only (e.g. funding research projects), or by non-binding or even binding legislation, we need to be watchful. 

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REFERENCE

Froestad, J, and C Shearing (2007) ‘Beyond restorative justice:  Zwelethemba, a future-focused model using local capacity conflict resolution.’  In:  R Mackay et al., eds.  Images of restorative justice theory.  Frankfurt am Main:  Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft. 
 
Martin Wright
May 2008