Heather Strang

Repair or Revenge: Victims and Restorative Justice

1. The Victim in Criminal Justice 2. Victims of Crime and the Victim Movement 3. The Theory and Practice of Restorative Justice 4. The Reintegrative Shaming Experiments: Research Design and Methodology 5. The Lived Experience of Victims: How Restorative Justice Worked in Canberra 6. Victim Satisfaction with the Restorative Alternative 7. Victims and Offenders: A Relational Analysis 8. Conclusion

Verdicts or Inventions? Interpreting Results from Randomized Controlled Experiments in Criminology

The social benefits of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) would be enhanced by general recognition of three problems of their interpretation and a redefinition of their mission in relation to program development and evaluation. One problem is that of “forest versus trees,” or the sampling relationship between each test of a hypothesis and the conclusions drawn from all such tests taken together. A second problem is interpreting RCTs as testing theory or policy when they cannot achieve a high correlation between the treatments assigned and treatments actually applied in each case. The third problem is what works for whom, or whether identical treatments cause different effects, on average, for different kinds of people, groups, situations, or other units of analysis that were different at the point of random assignment. Confronting these three problems suggests that RCTs should not only seek verdicts about what works but also should seek better inventions of crime prevention programs for further testing.

Experimental Ethnography: The Marriage of Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Experimental and ethnographic research methods are often described as mutually exclusive. This article suggests how they could be combined in the method of “experimental ethnography.” Building ethnographic methods into the separate branches of randomized controlled trials could substantially increase the range of conclusions that can be produced by experimental research designs, as well as by ethnographic methods. Experimental designs offer greater internal validity for learning what the effects of a social program are, and ethnographic methods offer greater insight into why the effects were produced. The prospects for such integration depend on the capacity of two different communities within social science to work together for the common goal of discovering truth.

The Threat to Restorative Justice Posed by the Merger with Community Justice: A Paradigm Muddle

The debate about restorative justice and community justice that Paul McCold encourages in his article (McCold, 2004, this issue) is an important one in the American context. It is important because it would be unfortunate if the development of restorative justice in the US were circumscribed by the limits of community justice. While community justice has proven a popular idea, and while balanced and restorative justice (BARJ) has managed to incorporate a number of restorative justice concepts into community justice, little attention has been given to producing evidence that community justice or BARJ are effective strategies for crime reduction or enhanced community efficacy. While restorative justice might be criticized on similar grounds, progress continues to be made around the world to test its effectiveness. We need to ensure not only that policymakers understand the differences between restorative justice and these other programs but also that much more effort is put into finding the evidence in both community justice and restorative justice about what works, when, and for whom.

Are Restorative Justice Conferences More Fair Than Criminal Courts? Comparing Levels of Observed Procedural Justice in the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE)

The reintegrative shaming experiments (RISE) were conducted in Canberra, Australia, between 1995 and 2000. RISE compared the effects of standard court proceedings to restorative justice (RJ)–focused diversionary conferences (DCs) with juvenile, young adult, and adult offenders who had been arrested for personal property, shoplifting, violent, or drunk driving offenses. We evaluated, using observational data, the effect of RJ conferences on objective procedural justice. We find that the DCs produced significantly higher levels of offender engagement within the adjudicative process and higher levels of ethical treatment, and that, when compared with standard trials, conduct within the conferences was attuned to the reintegrative shaming (RIS) process. These results reinforce the previous RISE findings by providing evidence that the conferencing process, as delivered, was in keeping with the overall goals of RJ and supports the prior attribution of RISE’s effectiveness to the RJ process.

The morality of evidence: the second annual lecture for Restorative Justice: An International Journal

Abstract In the past two decades, restorative justice (RJ) has been the subject of more rigorous criminological research than perhaps any other strategy for crime prevention and victim support. A misalignment between practice and research, however, has resulted in much confusion about which practices are, or are not, supported by the existing research base. This confusion raises the moral problem of doing things to people without evidence that those things do no harm. In what has become a wide array of justice practices called ‘restorative’, there are serious risks of both direct and indirect harm in promoting—or even condoning—untested practices: (1) Many practices remain untested, despite claims that tests of some RJ practices support all RJ practices, so that the untested practices may be causing harm directly; (2) Practices that have been rigorously tested and found to be effective are not widely used, while untested RJ practices have arguably caused harm indirectly by diverting resources from practices known to be effective; (3) Victims of violent crime are indirectly harmed by the diversion of RJ resources to property crime, where evidence shows that RJ is less effective. We therefore assert a moral obligation for RJ practitioners to ensure that their work does no harm by promoting rigorous evaluations of what they are doing, and encouraging investment in tested strategies for the kinds of victims and offenders on whom RJ is known to have the strongest effects.

Temporal Clustering of Child Homicide: Contagion or Illusion?

Data available on the characteristics of all Australian homicides over ten years since mid 1989 provide an opportunity to investigate whether child homicide is subject to temporal clustering. If this were found to be the case, then contagion resulting from media publicity might be a possible explanation. This follows from studies indicating some influence from media publicity given to suicides. No temporal clustering could be detected and results indicate that any given child homicide in Australia has no effect on the subsequent rate of child homicides. The study suggests that caution is needed before assuming that proximate events are necessarily related. It remains a possibility that child homicide may be the product of contagion over a longer time frame, as a consequence of intense media publicity given to high profile events. The media should respect community sensibilities in reporting such events and avoid sensational coverage in an ethical and balanced way.

Experiments in restorative justice

Restorative justice famously is a story both ancient and modern. It describes both the oldest means of nonviolent conflict resolution and the most recent framework for remedying long-recognised deficits in our criminal justice system. Its ancient form refers to traditional justice responses that entailed offenders making amends to their victims mainly through restitution, to restore order and peace after a conflict and to avoid the consequences of feud and vengeance (Weitekamp 1999). It remains pervasive in many different renderings throughout the world (Braithwaite 2002), but its lineage through the Pacific region has been especially important in the development of recent formulations of restorative justice. This history has been particularly significant in New Zealand and Australia, which, in large measure, have been the locations for many of the intellectual and practical developments in restorative justice (RJ) over the past 25 years.