Leo Van Garsse

Has Probation Any Impact in Terms of Reparation to Victims and Communities? Complicating a Simple Question

In the list of topics and questions addressed with regard to probation, that of reparation cannot be neglected. Indeed, for a couple of decades now, the prominence of reparation and restoration in the list of goals of public intervention in the aftermath of crime has been obvious. The original justification of criminal justice (CJ) as a symbolic re-confirmation of moral order as a ‘public good’ has tended to give way to a modernist, pragmatic approach. Herein the notion of ‘justice’ is conceived as a ‘function’ in a society focussed upon maximising a climate of security, likely to promote an atmosphere of well-being among the citizens. In this line, and more in particular after the Second World War, doing justice was seen more and more as a matter of public service, to be managed as efficiently as possible. In a context of worldwide disintegration of traditional communities, the theme of victims’ need for reparation showed up as a matter of political credibility. The individual ‘victim’ became recognised as the holder of specific group of civil rights, to be responded to by the state. Moreover, the victim’s social surroundings were also to be recognised as an important stakeholder in the provision of criminal justice. Doing justice thereby was seen as, at least partly, an aspect of community-building with prominence given to the role and to the interest of the individual or the communal–collective victim, with both in a position of claiming the right to be properly compensated for the damage done through the offence.