Restorative Justice Programmes (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

The use of restorative justice to change behaviour

• Braithwaite (2004) summarises restorative justice (RJ) as a process of managed collaboration between offender and victim, based on the principles of healing and empowerment

  • Historically, a person convicted of a criminal offence would have been regarded as having committed a crime against the state, whereas RJ switches the emphasis from the needs of the state to the needs of the individual victim

• RJ is rehabilitative in aim and intent rather than punitive, as it allows the victim to speak about the impact of the crime on them, which in turn should enlighten the offender as to the harm that their actions have caused

• A supervised meeting between the two parties is organised, attended by a trained mediator, in which the victim is given the opportunity to confront the offender and explain how the incident affected them

  • The offender is able to see the consequences of their actions, including the emotional distress it caused, which is seen as an important part of the rehabilitation process

• The key elements of the RJ process can be summarised as the five Rs:

  1. Relationship: the offender has damaged the relationship not only with the victim but with society, so it is necessary for the offender to feel accountable for their actions so that the relationship can be healed

  2. Respect: all participants in the RJ process should show respect towards each other; this is achieved via active listening and trying to understand the perspective of the other person

  3. Responsibility: the offender must take responsibility for their actions, even if the harm inflicted on the victim was unintentional

  4. Repair: the offender does what they can to repair the damage they have caused, practically and emotionally

  5. Reintegration: the offender becomes part of the community and is accepted by that community, with the emphasis on positive, active outcomes 

• Not all restorative programmes involve face-to-face encounters between offender and victim, as occasionally the offender may make some financial restitution to the victim which may reflect the psychological damage done, or the actual physical damage in the case of a break-in

  • Other variations involve the offender repairing damaged property themselves, and RJ is flexible enough to function as an alternative to prison, as an add-on to community service, or as an incentive that may lead to the reduction of an existing sentence

Research which investigates restorative justice

• Shapland et al. (2007) – a seven-year government-funded research project concluded that every £1 spent on restorative justice saved the criminal justice system £8 through reduced reoffending, though some estimates are much more conservative

• Latimer et al. (2005) – a meta-analysis comparing RJ with traditional offender rehabilitation programmes found RJ to be more effective, although as participants were self-selecting this may bias the findings

Evaluation of restorative justice

Strengths

• Unlike custodial sentencing, which tends to adopt a 'one size fits all' approach, RJ offers a degree of flexibility in how programmes are administered, and the term covers a wide range of possible applications including schools and hospitals

  • However, this does present difficulties in drawing general conclusions about the effectiveness of the approach, as schemes can be adapted and tailored to the needs of the individual situation

• Sherman & Strang (2007) found improvements in victims' mental health after they had voiced their emotions and expressed the impact the crime had had on their lives

Limitations

• There is a growing number of feminist commentators who take issue with the widespread use of RJ, and the organisation Women's Aid have called for a legislative ban on its use in domestic violence cases

  • Their concerns relate to the power imbalance in the relationship between the abuser and the abused, and to the fact that the wider community, who should be offering support, often resorts to blaming the victim

• The meeting between offender and victim may be an emotionally charged affair requiring the input of a skilled and experienced individual to act as mediator, and specialist professionals who are trained in these matters are likely to be expensive and few and far between

  • In addition, restorative justice programmes often suffer from high dropout rates, as the offender or victim may 'lose their nerve' prior to the scheduled meeting and withdraw from the scheme, which means that in practice it may not always be the best and most cost-effective solution

Issues & Debates

• Restorative justice assumes that offenders can take personal responsibility for their actions and choose to make amends, supporting the idea of free will

  • This contrasts with deterministic explanations (e.g., biological), which suggest behaviour is out of the offender’s control

• While traditional punishment systems apply universal rules (nomothetic), restorative justice takes an idiographic approach

  • It tailors the process to the individual circumstances of the victim and offender for a more personal, context-specific resolution