Albert W. Dzur

Forgiveness and Public Deliberation: The Practice of Restorative Justice

It is not easy to define the way we should be angry, with whom, about what, for how long. (1) Introduction Is forgiveness a social good that communities can further through mediated public dialogue between victims of crimes and offenders? Though commonly and rightly thought of as dependent upon personal feelings, in particular dependent upon the deliberate relaxing of the feeling of resentment, forgiveness has communicative and social dimensions. (2) These dimensions of forgiveness are at the forefront of the theory and practice of the restorative justice reform movement. Originating in just a few states in the 1970s, restorative justice programs are now quite common at the state and local level in the United States, handling mostly property offenses and minor assaults committed by juveniles. (3) The goal of restorative justice is to foster, through voluntary public dialogue, interpersonal reconciliation between victims and offenders as well as social reconciliation between offenders and the community. Trained facilitators encourage victims to express their feelings and to communicate to offenders the impact of their acts; facilitators also elicit communication from offenders about their life-situations and about their feelings of remorse or shame. The social dimension in restorative justice is furthered, in some programs, by the participation of community volunteers who symbolize the communitys interest in reconciling victim and offender and in reintegrating offenders. The restorative justice movement is of interest to political theorists and ethicists because it raises key questions about the link between public dialogue and positive emotional states like the relaxing of resentment experienced in forgiveness. Though we understand how public dialogue contributes to clarification of practical choices, we know much less about how it helps us transform our emotional responses toward others. (4) The movement is interesting, too, as a challenge to general normative theories of criminal justice. In the first part of the paper, we analyze the theoretical justification for restorative justice, develop the central ideal of restorative communication, and outline the public procedures required for this ideal. In this section, we describe the views held by restorative justice theorists without assessing their philosophical soundness or their empirical validity. Then we briefly turn to one case description of restorative justice, Vermonts reparative probation program. In both sections we are guided by simple questions: What is the ideal of restorative communication at the heart of theories of restorative justice? Why is such communication needed? What are its goals, exactly? What are its practical requirements? What is the function of its public, community-oriented dimensions? Our description of the goals and structure of Vermonts attempt to institute restorative communication leads, in the third section of the paper, to a more general discussion of the implications of seeing forgiveness as the central goal of criminal justice. Even if restorative justice theorists are right that forgiveness is a social good we can foster through public deliberation, just how important is this good? Is forgiveness in tension with other goods we wish to pursue through the criminal justice system? We believe that we should announce our objectives up front. Restorative justice is a multifaceted critique of mainstream criminal justice theory and practice, a critique with which we are partly sympathetic. Further, we see the ideal of restorative communication, and especially the goal of greater public participation in criminal justice administration, as rich theoretically and worthy of more empirical study. Our analysis and case description are meant to help focus such empirical assessment of restorative justice programs. Nonetheless, we are inclined to be quite skeptical as to whether the criminal justice system should seek to place forgiveness and restoration ahead of other objectives. …

Restorative justice and democracy: fostering public accountability for criminal justice

This essay examines the democratic aspects of restorative justice, placing it in the context of a more general civic engagement movement attempting to narrow the distance between citizens and the state. Along with the goals of fostering healing dialogs between victims, offenders, and communities that can lead to forgiveness and restoration of loss rather than compensatory penal harm, restorative justice programs such as the Vermont reparative probation program attempt to share responsibility and decision-making power for the awful tasks of criminal justice. Over the last 35 years, while restorative justice programs have become more widespread and more mainstream, their democratic dimensions have remained underdeveloped. This essay critically reflects on the degree to which restorative justice programs have involved the public in the professional domain of criminal justice administration and how well they have managed to operate within rule-bound bureaucratic environments while remaining informal and open to community members. It also assesses how well restorative justice, as a reform movement, has addressed the so-called populist punitiveness many commentators believe has driven the ‘get tough’ criminal justice policies, such as mandatory minimum sentencing, that make the US the current world leader in imprisonment.

Democracy's Free School : Tocqueville and Lieber on the Value of the Jury

This essay discusses the jury’s value in American democracy by examining Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis of the jury as a free school for the public. His account of jury socialization, which stressed lay deference to judges and trust in professional knowledge, was one side of a complex set of ideas about trust and authority in American political thought. Tocqueville’s contemporary Francis Lieber held juries to have important competencies and to be ambivalent rather than deferential regarding court professionals. The nineteenth-century courtroom exhibited such ambivalence and was marked by institutional conflict involving increasing professional authority demanded by the bench and populist counter-pressures. Assessing the value of the jury today may require some of the conceptual tools Tocqueville offers, but must also renew an appreciation of the jury as a site that utilizes already existing juridical capabilities of lay people and thus re-conceive the relationship between lay people and court professionals.

Conversations on restorative justice: a talk with Kay Pranis

Kay Pranis is a restorative justice advocate specialising in peacemaking circles. She began her work in criminal justice as the director of research services at the Citizen’s Council on Crime and Justice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She then served as restorative justice planner for the Minnesota Department of Corrections from 1994 to 2003. Kay has conducted circle trainings in schools, churches, workplaces, prisons, and in a range of communities from rural farm towns in Minnesota to Chicago’s South Side. The author of Peacemaking circles: from crime to community (Pranis, Stuart, & Wedge, 2003); Doing democracy with circles (Ball, Caldwell, & Pranis, 2010); Circle forward (Boyes-Watson & Pranis, 2014); and The little book of circle processes (Pranis, 2005), Kay speaks regularly to audiences of academics and practitioners all over the world.

Thick populism: democracy-enhancing popular participation

ABSTRACT This article posits that some forms of popular participation offer important resources for democratic renewal. It develops a conceptual distinction between thin and thick varieties of populism. Thin populist movements mobilize popular support to replace elite leaders by undermining or corroding the deliberative and inclusionary principles of representative government. In contrast, thick populist movements seek to modify or alter the practices and conventions of representative government by offering democracy-enhancing and trust-building organizational forms and political practices. This distinction between thin and thick populism helps identify a swath of normative and practical common-ground occupied by populists and deliberative democratic reformers and innovators, who have also held deeply critical views of representative democracy. The article discusses four contemporary examples of democratic innovation (broadly understood) to illustrate how thick populism can take root in organizations, institutions, campaigns, and in the efforts of everyday citizens. Consideration is given to the lessons that contemporary forms of thick populism offer for advocates of participatory and deliberative democratic innovation.

Conversations on restorative justice: a talk with Dominic Barter

Dominic Barter develops social technologies that promote dialogue and partnership, focusing primarily in the fields of education, justice, culture and social change. In the mid-90s he collaborated in the development of Restorative Circles, a community-based and community-owned practice for dynamic engagement with conflict that grew from conversations with residents in gang-controlled shantytown favelas in Rio de Janeiro. He adapted the practice for the Brazilian Ministry of Justice’s award-winning national projects in restorative justice, has introduced it in 22 countries and supports its application in a further 18 countries. In recent years he has supervised the mediation programme for the Police Pacification Units in Rio, served as invited professor at the Standing Group for Consensual Methods of Conflict Resolution, at the High Court of Rio, with a focus on school mediation and bullying, and worked on the development of restorative community. Dominic founded and directed the Dialogue Restoration Project for the State Education Department of Rio, bringing restorative practice to high schools, and established restorative systems in the youth detention systems of 4 states. Projects he has worked with have won the Premio Innovare—the national prize for innovation in justice—four times in ten years. From his youth in England up to recent occupations in Rio he has also been active in street-based social movements, with an emphasis on participatory, dialogical and consensual political forms.

Conversations on restorative justice: a talk with Ali Gohar

Ali Gohar is the founder of Just Peace Initiatives, a non-profit working for peace and justice through conflict transformation practices. After receiving a Masters degree in International Relations...

Conversations on restorative justice: a talk with Clifford Shearing

Clifford Shearing holds positions at Griffith University, the universities of Cape Town, Montreal and New South Wales. His academic work has broadened criminology’s boundaries, with a primary focus on ‘security governance’, while his applied work has been concerned with enhancing safety. Throughout his career, Shearing has been engaged in enhancing the safety of people’s lives through policy and practical engagements across the globe, particularly in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

No Day in Court: Access to Justice and the Politics of Judicial Retrenchment:

their slippery slope arguments that gun regulations portend the elimination of all individual rights and freedoms have not been confined to social discourse. A smattering of anti-government patriot and militia groups has taken up arms against government officials, most recently and notably the Bundy family. Rancher Cliven Bundy was arrested in 2016, two years after he and armed sympathizers threatened federal officials trying to prevent him from illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. His son Ammon Bundy led and was arrested for the 2016 armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge building in Oregon. Spitzer asserts that no society can be maintained, not even one offering such a broad array of individual rights and freedoms as our own, if armed rebellions against the federal government like these are part of individual citizens’ constitutional rights. And they are not, he says. The last two chapters of Guns across America—on Stand Your Ground laws and New York gun laws, respectively—are not as seamlessly integrated into the overall narrative as are the earlier chapters. The Trayvon Martin case brought these laws the national attention they deserve after roughly half of U.S. states passed Stand Your Ground laws, but these changes and the Castle Doctrine laws that preceded them are less about guns and more about self-defense. Spitzer uses the concluding chapter to share his experience of building a legal semi-automatic rifle in New York, as well as obtaining a pistol permit. He concludes that New York State’s comparatively restrictive gun control regime is not really restrictive at all and certainly does not interfere with anyone’s gun rights. The specific case of New York is well chosen, although I would note that federal (more so than state) restrictions on guns lie at the heart of gun rights discourse claiming threats to individual rights and freedoms. In sum, Robert Spitzer has written a sober, meticulously researched, exhaustive, and critical book on the history of gun laws, gun ownership, and the role of individual gun rights vis-à-vis federal government authority. There is no false equivalence to be found in his work; he lets the overwhelming evidence of the longstanding American tradition of restrictive gun laws speak for itself. Alas, gun politics continue to be as contentious as any social issue, and gun policy is as politicized as any as well. Spitzer’s book sheds much-needed light on some of the myths of early America that are used to generate opposition to gun control. Despite wading into political philosophy, constitutional law, and complex U.S. court decisions, Guns across America is an accessible and enjoyable read, sure to appeal not only to scholars and students of the gun debate, political science, and sociology, but to a general audience as well.

Aristotle and Hamilton on Commerce and Statesmanship

Aristotle and Hamilton on Commerce and Statesmanship. By Michael D. Chan. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. 248p.