Restorative Justice Conferencing
In a restorative justice conference, an offending youth, his or her victim, and supporters of both the offender and victim are brought together with a trained facilitator to discuss the incident and the harm it has brought to the victim and the group of supporters. The conference provides an opportunity for victims to explain how they have been harmed and to question offending youth. Supporters also have an opportunity to describe how they have been affected by the incident. At the end of the conference, the participants reach an agreement on how the youth can make amends to the victim and they sign a reparation agreement. The agreement typically includes an apology,4 and it often includes a requirement that some type of restitution be made to the victim. Sometimes agreements require youth to perform community service or call for other actions such as improving school attendance, completing homework, or performing chores at home or school.
Advocates of restorative justice conferencing point to its many potential benefits. Conferences, for example, are expected to address the emotional needs and tangible losses of victims and hold youth accountable for misdeeds more effectively than the traditional juvenile court system. Conferences also allow youth to learn how their offending has negatively affected others. Finally, conferences create a supportive community for offending youth.
In theory, the effectiveness of restorative justice conferences is based on the principles of control, deterrence, and "reintegrative shaming." From a control perspective, conferences "control" youth's involvement in delinquency by encouraging them through socialization to believe in the moral legitimacy of the law. The control effect depends on youth's having strong bonds to family and/or conventional institutions such as school or church (Hirschi, 1969). If, as advocates contend, restorative justice conferences provide a learning opportunity in which the harm caused by offending is directly communicated to youth and youth's bonds to family members and community institutions are strengthened, conferences become part of the socialization process through which youth learn to conform to society's norms. From a deterrence perspective, if conferences hold youth accountable and impose consequences more effectively than the traditional juvenile justice system, then the conferences raise the costs of offending relative to the benefits and therefore may deter youth from committing offenses.
John Braithwaite's (1989) theory of reintegrative shaming builds on the principles of control and deterrence. Braithwaite argues that people are generally deterred from committing crime by two informal forms of social control: fear of social disapproval and conscience. He contends that punishments or reparation agreements imposed by family members, friends, or other individuals important to an offender are more effective than those imposed by a legal institution. For most people, he argues, fear of being shamed by those they care about is the major deterrent to committing crime because the opinions of family and friends mean more than those of an unknown criminal justice authority.
Braithwaite also predicts that restorative justice conferences may be more effective than traditional courts because conferences include the direct participation of supporters of both victims and youthful offenders. By including supporters, conferences allow youth to be held responsible in the context of a community of care. In such a setting, youth can be held accountable for their acts without being condemned as people (Sherman, 1993). According to reintegrative shaming theorists, this combination of accountability and respect is key to keeping an offender within the community (Braithwaite, 1993).
Although too limited to provide definitive answers, research to date supports the positive effects of restorative justice conferences. The first of two formal experiments that have been conducted involved police-run conferences in Bethlehem, PA. That experiment found high levels of victim satisfaction and some evidence of reduced reoffending for person offenses but not property offenses (McCold and Wachtel, 1998). The second, the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE), also reported high levels of victim satisfaction and showed positive changes in the attitudes of offenders (Strang et al., 1999). The impact of restorative justice conferences on future offending remains under investigation.5
The promise of the initial findings from research on restorative justice conferences, coupled with frustration over then-existing interventions for very young offenders, led Indianapolis juvenile justice officials to consider an experimental pilot project.
|
Case Study: Clearing Up an Offender's Misunderstanding
David had been arrested for vandalizing a school bathroom and causing considerable damage. During the restorative justice conference, David was quiet and seemed unrepentant. The conference dragged on without much progress. Finally, David spoke up. He explained that the reason he had been so mad on the day of the incident was that his teacher not only had taken away his bag of potato chips but had then eaten the chips in front of the class, which David intepreted as an attempt to humiliate him. One of the conference participants was the teacher who had been involved in the classroom incident. The teacher said that David was wrong—the chips she had eaten were from her own lunch, and David’s chips remained unopened in her desk. She explained to David that while it was appropriate for her to take the chips away from a student during class, she would never open the bag and eat them herself. With this information, David’s demeanor changed immediately, the atmosphere in the conference shifted significantly, and the group was then able to move forward and reach a successful reparation agreement. The conference ended with David apologizing to the teacher and with David, his mother, and the school officials agreeing that David would attend counseling. As a final condition to the agreement, David agreed to be responsible for carrying notes back and forth between his mother and his teacher to ensure ongoing communication. Without the active involvement of David’s teacher in the conference, it seems unlikely that the reason for his anger would have been discovered. Although a forum other than a restorative justice conference might have held David accountable for his actions, he probably would have remained bitter and continued to feel that he had been treated unfairly—first by the teacher in the classroom and then by those who held him responsible for the damage he had caused. Including David and his teacher in the conference and providing an opportunity for dialog had several benefits: David gained insight into the teacher’s actions, the group came to understand David’s behavior, and David had the opportunity to make amends to those harmed by his actions. |
| Previous | Contents | Next |
 |
|
| Restorative Justice
Conferences as an Early Response to Young Offenders |
|