Restorative justice chapter 3 (justice that prompts healing)

Reparative conception

"Crime causes harm; justice must repair that harm." And the harm is at many levels, and it can often be addressed most fully whenever both parties meet in a restorative process to explore and respond to those harms. However, reparative conception is not limited by the inability or unwillingness of the parties to meet in those circumstances, it would insist that court proceedings focus on identifying and taking steps to repair the harm caused by the crime.

Three key principles of restorative justice

1.justice requires that we work to heal victims, offenders, and communities that have been injured by crime. 2. Victims, offenders, and communities should have the opportunity for active involvement in the justice process as early and as fully as they wish. 3. We must rethink the relative roles and responsibilities of government and community: in promoting justice, government is responsible for preserving a just order and the community for establishing a just peace.

Peace requires?

A community's commitment to respect the rights of its members and to help resolve conflicts among them. It requires that those members respect community interest even whenever they conflict with their individual interest.

Peace

A cooperative dynamic fostered from within the community.

Government should maintain?

A just order.

Community should maintain?

A just peace.

Virtually every facet of our criminal justice system works to reduce victims, offenders, and communities to passive participants.

Because the government is considered to be the primary victim, its virtual monopoly over apprehension, prosecution, and punishment of offenders seems logical and legitimate.

Safety comes when?

Both government and community play their roles upholding order and establishing peace.

Restorative justice envisions a world in which?

Community life is actively peaceful and harmonious. When conflicts occur, they are addressed in ways that resolve the causes and care for the people involved. All people are worthy of respect and consideration, and they are empowered to participate in processes of community building. They take active responsibility for their behavior, taking initiative to find solutions to problems and to make amends for harmful behaviors and their consequences.

Recompense through the community

Community service, community centers

Restorative processes on the other hand, places a much higher value on?

Direct involvement by the parties.

Restorative justice also focuses on the offender to repair the harm while formal justice

Focuses on the government to inflict proportional harm

Community 2 definitions

Geographical location- the neighborhood in which the victim or offender lives in which the time to place- "local community" Or connectedness (non geographic) "a community of care/interest) this can also mean victims of the same crime, and anyone who is interested in the crime. Not just friends and family

In at least two respects all victims have 2 common needs:

The need to regain control of their lives and the need for vindication of their rights.

Reintegration

The parties are given the means and opportunity to rejoin their communities as a whole, contributing members rather than continuing to bear the stigma of harm and offense.

Each types of communities may be harmed in different ways but they will all be affected in commons ways as well:

The sense of safety and confidence of their members is threatened, order within the community is threatened, and (depending on the crime) common values of the community of challenged and perhaps eroded.

Vindication

The victim wants the offender to admit that they were wrong.

Being a victim is by definition a position of being powerless.

The victim was unable to prevent the crime from occurring. And as a result victims often need help regaining control over their lives.

The encounter conception would. It consider something restorative if it did not involve?

The victim, offender, and other parties meeting together.

Enocunter conception

This focuses on the important of stakeholder meetings and on many benefits that come as stakeholders discuss the crime, what contributed to it, and its aftermath.

Primary victims

Those against whom the crime was committed, my sustain physical injury, monetary loss, and emotional suffering. These may be temporary, may last a life time, or may cause death.

Amends

Those responsible for the harm resulting from the offensive also take responsibility for repairing it to the extent possible.

In criminal justice processes the victims interests are considered?

To be identical with society's, which the prosecutor represents. Where as the defendant generally has a lawyer, the does not;instead, the victims interest are considered to be identical to society's.

Transformative conception

Transformative is far more expansive than the other two because it has to do with broken relationships at multiple levels of society. Transformative conception addresses not simply individual instances of harm but goes beyond to structural issues of injustice, such as racism, sexism, and classicism. Each of these prevent people from living in whole, harmonious, and healthy relationships with others and with their social and physical environments.

Tradition justice

Used to describe the current criminal justice system. Unfortunately this is also used to refer to customary or indigenous practices.

Criminal justice

Used to refer to the current system.

Emergent values

Values that may or may not result from a successful process (eg forgiveness, remorse, and reconciliation) p.49

When is repair most fully accomplished?

When it results from an encounter of the parties.

Habilitation

How the community helps the offender. This is like healing.

One of the key differences between restorative justice processes and criminal justice processes is?

In restorative processes, the victim, offender, and other interested parties are free to speak and decide what to do in a relatively informal environment and through that come to terms with what happened. In court, on the other hand, the active participants are generally professionals who have only a professional connection to the crime and to those who were touched by it. Decisions are. It made by parties but, rather, by the judge.

Corner stone values

Inclusion, encounter, amends, and reintegration

Contributing injuries

Injuries that existed before the crime and prompted in some way the criminal conduct of the offender. Ex:some victims of child abuse become abusers themselves and some substance abusers commit crimes to support their addictions.

Restorative justice

Is a theory of justice that emphasizes repairing the harm caused or revealed by criminal behavior. It is best accomplished through cooperative processes including all stakeholders.

Order

Is imposed on the community. It establishes and enforces external limits on individual behavior to minimize overt conflict and to control the resolution of conflict. Like peace, a just order is important in preserving safety, and governments generally have both power and mandate to establish such an order.

Reparative conception would not describe something as restorative if?

It did not provide some sort of redress to direct victims and perhaps, communities and offenders as well.

Redress (between victim and government)

Making something right. (The victim has to go through the government to get this)

Retribution

Means deserved punishment for wrong behavior. The active party is the government, and the purpose of retribution is for the government to inflict harm on the offender proportionate to the wrong done.

Recompense

Means the deserved obligation to pay for wrongfully causing an injury. The active party is the offender, and the purpose of recompense is for the offender to repair as fully as possible the injury caused by the harm. (Restorative approach)

Peace means

No crime, maybe trust in the community, transparency

Both order and peace are a means to securing?

Public safety.

Habilitation

Refers to the acknowledgment and the needs to address a offenders injuries from crime.

Order

Respect the law, follow the law, giving punishment.

The goal of the community and the government is

Safety

When the community fails to foster peace it maybe necessary for the government to intervene and impose order. Ex:

The American civil rights movement. Desegregation of public schools was met with violent resistance on the community level, and national guard had to enforce order so that African-Americans could enter the schools. The community, content with preserving the interest of the powerful by seeking to maintain status quo, had failed in its role to seek peace for all members.

Contemporary criminal justice

The book thinks that this is the best way to describe our current system.

Transformative conception would not describe something as being restorative if?

Address structural impediments to wholesome, healthy relationships.

Encounter

Affected parties are given the opportunity to meet the other parties in a safe environment to discuss the offense, harms, and the appropriate responses.

Inclusion

All affected parties are invited to directly shape and engage in restorative processes in response to crime.

Recompense

An apology form the offender, community service

Secondary victims

Are indirectly harmed by the actions of the offenders. May include family members, neighbors, and friends of primary victims and offenders. Their injuries and needs may also be considered in constructing a restorative response to crime.

Resulting injuries (for the offender)

Are those caused by the crime itself or aftermath. These may be physical (as whenever the offender is wounded during the crime or incarcerated as a result of it). Emotional (as whenever the offender experiences shame) or moral and spiritual (because the offender has chose to harm another). Furthermore offenders will likely be harmed as a result of the criminal justice systems response.

Both order and peace are appropriate avenues for achieving safety. However,:

As imposed order increases, personal freedom decreases; hence, peace will be sought in a society that values freedom.

Why do defendants in our current criminal justice system have few incentives to assume responsibility for their actions?

Because of the legal presumption of innocence bestowed on all who are charged with crimes, as well as the panoply of due process rights that are afforded to them. They have many incentives to ransom silent while the government marshals its case and their lawyers attempt to dismantle it.