Geroge Julian

Restorative justice has increased in popularity as a response to crime that may prevent some of the counterproductive outcomes of conventional criminal justice and juvenile justice practices. Restorative justice may more effectively involve and respond to the needs of victims than conventional criminal justice and juvenile justice, and may confer benefits to offenders and communities. Despite increased interest from government actors and members of the public, there are no established evidence-based restorative justice practices. Significant gaps in knowledge remain in terms of program development, facilitator training, and program implementation, which undoubtedly contribute to the varied participant outcomes observed in the literature. These gaps in knowledge are attributable to the reliance on theoretical models of restorative justice and outcomes evaluations, without sufficient research examining the mechanisms that produce positive or negative outcomes for participants. This uncracked black box of restorative justice inhibits the identification of restorative practices that are beneficial to victims, offenders, and other affected parties across offense types.

In South Africa, significant progress has been made in legislative and policy efforts to advance victim participation in the parole process. Victims now have a legal right to make representations at a Correctional Supervision and Parole Board (Parole Board) hearing in certain matters relating to parole placement decisions. This conceptual paper aims to discuss the circumstances in which crime victims may exercise their rights to information and participation in parole hearings. Any reference to a victim in South Africa includes a complainant or a relative of a deceased victim. In promoting a victim-centred approach to criminal justice, provision has been made in both section 75(4) of the Correctional Services Act 111 of 1998 and section 299A of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 for the involvement of victims in Parole Board hearings. In 2005, the South African Department of Correctional Services issued specific directives to facilitate and promote the involvement of complainants in Parole Board hearings. These directives were developed in support of the Victim Empowerment Programme of Government, which is based upon the concept of restorative justice. The stance of the Department of Correctional Services is that all parole considerations should include victim participation; however, this paper argues that practical challenges remain for both the Department of Correctional Services and the victims of crime. It proposes directions for future research as there is little to no research that has been conducted on the effects of the parole process on victims.

The utility of restorative justice for victimless crimes – specifically, drink driving – was tested as part of the Canberra Re-Integrative Shaming Experiments (RISE), one of the earliest systematic trials of restorative justice. The researchers envisaged two mechanisms whereby restorative justice might lead to reduced reoffending even in the absence of a victim: a victimless variant of reintegrative shaming, and the mobilisation of the offender’s friends and family to exercise informal coercion over the offender.  Reviewing the literature on the RISE trials, this paper analyses the reasons for the failure of both these mechanisms to have the desired effect, identifies the ways in which restorative justice would need to change – both as a practice and a philosophy – in order for the two mechanisms to function as anticipated, and considers the implications for contemporary restorative practice.

According to Beck (1992), key aspects of a risk society are the surveillance and management of risk, and the use of actuarial tools to achieve these aims. These have also been central tasks for the probation service and police when working with individuals convicted of sexual offending behaviour. Through an initial examination of the risk society thesis, this paper examines how risk came to be a dominant concept in the management of sexual offending behaviour in England and Wales. It will discuss the impact on criminal justice legislation and the work of probation officers who were tasked with working with these offenders. The dominance of risk in working with sexual offending behaviour has been strengthened by Acts of Parliament such as the Sex Offender Act 1997, which introduced sex offender registration, and the Sex Offender Act 2003. The actuarial tools OASys and Risk Matrix 2000 were designed to be explicitly focused on risk. Yet there is a growing body of literature which argues that a holistic approach is effective in enabling desistance; and with the development of more recent risk assessment tools such as the Active Risk Management System (ARMS), there are indications that approaches to assessing and managing risk reflect this ethos.

Adopting ‘community’ in policy making reflects a desire to generate a sense of belonging through increased citizen engagement with the state, despite the continuing contestability of the term and diverse experiences of ‘community’ (Mair, 1995; Hughes and Rowe, 2007). Definitions of ‘community’ include positive associations with attachment to place, activities and people (Wilmott, 1987), and ‘belonging’ stemming from shared experiences of adversity (Shapland, 2008). Communitarian theorists examine the relationship between citizens and the state, alongside broader structural conditions which impact policy implementation (Etzioni, 1995; Jordan, 1998; Hopkins-Burke, 2014). Policies focusing on ‘community’ embrace social cohesion and social capital theory as theoretical frameworks, as found with community justice initiatives, which claim to have a transformative effect through reducing crime, and therefore improving the quality of life for residents (Donoghue, 2014; Ward 2014). This paper uses secondary analysis and qualitative research to examine experiences of community and crime in Middlesbrough, through the lens of Layder’s (2006) social domain theory. The findings reveal that differing accounts of community are affected by crime, anti-social behaviour and broader structural changes. It reiterates the need for policy makers to better understand how community is experienced, and to re-examine what is required for the effective implementation of policy.

The paper refreshes our understanding of the established definitions of race hate crime, before reflecting on the impact on victims and reviewing criminal justice responses. It explores the nature and context of offences, in order to look at the characteristics of perpetrators and their rehabilitation. It considers briefly whether the criminal justice response would be complemented by more emphasis on deterrence, before drawing to a summary and conclusion.

This paper explores the wider experience of racial and religious hate crimes, specifically anti-Muslim hate, through the use of semi-structured interviews. Importantly, the aim of the paper is to look at the experience and impact of anti-Muslim hate, and Islamophobia by Muslims and by those who are ‘misidentified’ by perpetrators as being Muslim. The experience of non-Muslim victims is key, as it has been comparatively neglected in existing research into Islamophobia. The article then moves on to the consequences that this experience can have upon the victim and their wider community as captured by reporting centres. These centres are a legacy of the Macpherson Inquiry and subsequent Hate Crime Action Plans to address the issue of the underreporting of hate crimes and community engagement. Finally, this article looks at the effectiveness of initiatives, victim support and community engagement as per the recommendations of the Macpherson Inquiry. Overall, the findings suggest that more coordinated efforts need to be made in regards to how the police engage with minority communities. Further recommendations would be to engage local communities and organisations to establish long-term initiatives and projects, with sufficient funding to support victims of not only hate crime but also anti-Muslim hate.