British Journal of Criminology Advance Access published online on February 21, 2008
British Journal of Criminology, doi:10.1093/bjc/azn002
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The British Journal of Criminology 0:azn002 (2008)
© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
REDUCING RECIDIVISM
A Task for Restorative Justice?
* School of Law, University of Sheffield, Bartolomé House, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND, UK; g.j.robinson{at}sheffield.ac.uk.
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In this paper, we draw on our experience as evaluators of three restorative justice schemes in England and Wales which were funded under the auspices of the Home Office's ‘Crime Reduction Programme’ to reflect upon the theoretical and empirical potential of restorative justice (in particular, conferencing) to bring about reductions in reoffending on the part of participating offenders. We propose that there is a case to be made for a subtle shift in ways of thinking about the recidivism reduction potential of restorative justice: that is, as an opportunity to facilitate a desire, or consolidate a decision, to desist.
1 For Dignan (2001), the dramatic revival in government interest in restorative justice in England and Wales is directly attributable to its perceived relevance for the government's Crime Reduction Strategy. In this context, he argues, it is no surprise that one of the primary objectives for recent evaluations of government-funded restorative justice initiatives is to examine their impact on reoffending rates.
2 The evaluation was also funded originally by the Home Office, subsequently by RDS NOMS in the Ministry of Justice.
3 Under the stewardship of Lawrence Sherman and Heather Strang, and largely replicating the methods and design used in Canberra's RISE, the Justice Research Consortium (JRC) delivered a large number of conferences in three sites: London, Thames Valley and Northumbria. Two of these sites (London and Thames Valley) targeted adult offenders only, whilst Northumbria convened conferences for both youth and adult offenders. All three sites used the same operational model, and all conferences took place in criminal justice contexts. Most took place pre- or post-sentence, whilst a smaller number were diversionary (delivered at one site in the context of a final warning or adult caution). In two sites, conferences were organized and facilitated by police seconded to the scheme; in the other (Thames Valley), conferences were convened and organized by seconded probation and prison staff, and a number of experienced community mediators who were employed on a sessional basis.
4 Our points about restorative justice conferencing below should be taken in the context of offences with individuals as victims. Both victim and offender agreed to attend the conference before preparations were made to hold it and hence victim attendance rates were very high, at over 90 per cent (see Shapland et al. 2006b).
5 See, e.g. Braithwaite (1989); Strang (2002).
6 Similarly, Sherman (1993) has proposed a ‘defiance theory’, whereby some offenders or members of groups which feel themselves antagonistic to state power may be resistant to and even fight back against any attempt by people whom they don’t like or trust to tell them what to do. This would predict that such individuals will be more, not less, likely to reoffend if they are either subject to criminal justice homilies in sentencing or feel they are ‘forced’ to attend restorative justice (Sherman and Strang 2007). Tyler et al. (2007) similarly suggest that both restorative justice and criminal justice will only reduce reoffending if they embody procedural justice practices which promote the perceived legitimacy of the process for participants.
7 Outcome agreements were produced in 98 per cent of JRC conferences (n = 346) (Shapland et al. 2006a).
8 This argument throws into doubt practices such as excluding victims from discussion of what may happen in the future, through requiring them to leave the conference after having talked about the effects of offences upon them (Zernova forthcoming). It seems that one reason for the exclusion of victims is the adoption by facilitators of a zero-sum ideology, whereby victims’ needs are assumed to be potentially incompatible with those of offenders or the overarching needs of society/their agency to reduce crime. In England and Wales, at least, this assumption does not seem to be correct for the majority of victims.
9 Dignan (2005) draws an important distinction between two types of conferencing: police-led and family group conferencing. Whilst our evaluation focused only on the first type, we have not used the term ‘police-led conferencing’ because not all facilitators were police officers. It should also be noted that the conferencing which we evaluated was founded on strong principles of all participants being able to say what they wished, provided they also respected others’ rights to do so, and of a very non-directive role for facilitators.
10 Daly (2001b) notes that since 1993, whilst the Wagga Wagga model has spread to and proved popular in other parts of the world, it has in Australia largely been replaced by New Zealand-style family group conferencing.
11 Dignan (2005: 102) has recently argued that Braithwaite's theory of reintegrative shaming forms an important part of an emerging ‘moral discourse thesis’, evidence of which can be found in a variety of contemporary criminal justice practices. Central to this thesis, Dignan argues, is the idea that the offender's conscience is potentially a much more powerful weapon against deviant behaviour than is punishment, and that engaging the offender in ‘normative or moralizing dialogue’ can be an effective inhibitor of future offending behaviour. For Dignan, this emphasis on encouraging a moral perspective constitutes common ground for restorative justice and some contemporary ‘correctional’ approaches, such as cognitive–behavioural treatment, which encourages offenders to take responsibility for their actions and to acknowledge the harm caused to others. Bottoms’ (2002) view that conformity (and hence learning to conform) is a far more powerful concept than using criminality as a starting point for discussions about desistance or reoffending also forms a major part of this emerging moral argument.
12 Derived from interviews with participants some years after the restorative justice event.
13 Maruna (2001: 158) similarly highlights the negotiation of moral rather than physical reintegration, referring to the notion of ‘looking-glass rehabilitation’ to illustrate the ways in which offender rehabilitation or reform must be negotiated through interactions between the offender and significant others.
14 Halpern (2005) explains that social capital can be understood and examined at one or more of three levels of analysis: the level of individuals (the micro level), communities (the meso level) and nations (the macro level).
15 We do, however, accept Karstedt's (2002: 306) point about the ‘invisibility’ of emotions: i.e. we can never objectively know whether an offender really feels shame or remorse.
16 This is not to imply that this was always the case, or that some of the offenders in our sample did not display ‘defiance’ (Sherman et al. 2003).
17 It should be noted that a substantial number of offenders, even those with substantial offending records, do show a desire to desist, even if they find it difficult to put that into practice for a while. A majority of the persistent young adult offenders in the longitudinal Sheffield Pathways out of Crime Study, for example, said they had made a definite decision to desist, though some doubted their ability to do so (Shapland et al. forthcoming).
18 In JRC conferences, the victim was always an individual. Offender reactions might be different were the victim to be an organization or someone representing the victim's views, as Doak and O’Mahony (2004) have shown. Offenders may perceive different victims or different kinds of victims as having different amounts of legitimacy.
19 In our evaluation, both experimental and control groups received preparation for restorative justice, and both victim and offender had to consent to take part. Essentially, therefore, the only difference was the conference event itself and any activity consequent upon the outcome agreement.
20 In one burglary conference that we observed, the offender explained that he had not invited his family, partly because of feelings of shame and partly because he wanted to shield them from the prison environment (in which he was being held on remand and in which the conference took place). The victim in this case told the offender ‘You might be surprised if you talk to them .... Cutting yourself off makes it harder. I think they’d be interested in helping you’. The offender responded, ‘I’ve not thought about it like that’.
21 An exception was conferences facilitated by a prison officer seconded within his normal work environment of Bullingdon prison.
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