"The buck stops here." - Sign on President Harry S. Truman's desk
HOLDING RESTORATIVE JUSTICE ACCOUNTABLE - Zvi D. Gabbay
Crime should be seen as offense against people & relationships instead of a mere violation of legal norms. (Zehr 1990). Engage V+M+ C in a search for solutions which promote repair, reconciliation, reassurance.
3 value groups (Braithwaite)
- Must be honored & enforced as constraints: non-domination, empowerment, specific upper limits on sanctions, respectful listening, equal concern for all stakeholders, accountability & respect for fundamental human rights
- Practitioners should actively encourage/maximize in restorative processes: restoration of human dignity, property loss, damaged relationships, emotional restoration; provision of social support for the development of human capabilities to the fullest; prevention of future injustice
- Hope for but cannot urge participants to manifest: remorse, apology, forgiveness, mercy
Chicago Police Department CPD beat teams: police officers assigned to neighborhood, meet monthly to gather concerns & seek ways to address
Drug treatment courts: collaborate with treatment providers + other agencies to develop specific solutions that fit the different defendants who committed crimes motivated/caused by addiction
Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office
- CCP Community Conferencing Program: adults (>=17yo), non-violent cases in which offenders admitted to wrongdoing, occasionally accept assault/battery cases upon victim's request
- Modified conference: victims given a voice through police report statement
- Community Accountability Circle: 17yo first-time offenders charged with felony marijuana offenses
- Neighborhood Initiative: residents discuss neighborhood disputes, criminal cases that arose in neighborhood, re-entry of offenders back into neighborhood
RJ Center of Polk County Attorney's Office, Iowa
- VORP:
- Facilitators attend intensive training, observe 10, co-facilitate 10 more.
- Truancy Mediations:
- Truant pupil + family + SW + administrators
- Civilian Intake Mediations:
- Pre-charge VOM
31st Judicial District Circuit Court, Prince William County, Virginia
- 4-year federal declining fund, now fully funded by county
- Only accept juvenile first-time offenders of proerty & light violence crimes, mainly aimed at channeling young offenders out of the court system
- 8-10 hour Victim Impact Program -- surrogate victims share
- Accountability Conference (50% are shuttle mediations)
Midtown Community Court, Community Impact Panels, NY
- low-level quality of life crimes: prostitution, street-level drug possession, vandalism, disorderly conduct, trespass, shoplifting, public urination and violations of the open container law
- dialogue is the saction, no decision-making, not empowered to reach restitution agreements
- Those unfit for dialogues go to "Quality of Life Group" for lectures
RJ is conceived as a horizontal process of democratic deliberation that is integrated into external processes of accountability to court & the rule of law.
- Responsibility = obligation to do the right thing (private or public).
- Accountability = answerable to give a public account of something
- RJ's ideal of responsibility is Active responsibility. RJ method for engendering this is to widen circles of accoutability.
- RJ creates space where offenders are most likely to take responsibility, e.g. offender's loved one take active responsiblity to repair damage on victim
- Conventional Western criminal justice create spaces where offenders will be held responsible in proportion to their culpability
- When responsibility is taken and accounts accepted as sufficient to acquit that responsiblity, justice is done. Justice is always unfinished until an account has been accepted by stakeholders in the injustice.
- Even when state intervenes to hold someone passively responsible by imprisonment after they fail to take sufficient active responsibility for their action, there should be no giving up on active responsibility.
- Groupthink can be counteracted by a separate source of power.
- Immediate face-to-face accountability has virtue of authenticity of emotion, & virtue of timeliness
- Emotional connection supports carrying out the agreements
- Celebration circle after agreement were done
- Never give up on responsibility & accountability. We tolerate courts failing at the 20th appearances
M: facilitator neutral
RJ: not morally neutral, right the wrongs of injustices
M: between 2 parties
RJ: morally important to give an opportunity to all those who see themselves as key stakeholders in an alleged injustice to participate in the deliberation about what to do
M: seeks agreement
RJ: seeks repair
Resources:
- "whole of government approach": Australian Capital Territory's Crimes Act 2004
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