Restorative justice exam 1 review

Victim-offender mediation (VOM)

- Two intoxicated youths vandalized the houses and cars of 22 people

- The judge ordered the young men to do VOM, and the results were positive

- Creates an opportunity to meet one another

- Relies on the victim/offender to resolve their conflict

- Empower participants, promote dialogue, encourage problem solving

Where did victim-offender mediation start?

- 1974 Elmira, Onterio

Who is present during victim-offender mediations?

- The victim

- The offender

Family group conferencing

- Māori culture is communitarian rather than individualistic

- Children are considered to be the future of the Māori people

- based on social welfare, not the criminal justice system

- Used in juvenile cases

- Satisfaction level is very high

Where did conferencing start?

- 1989 New Zealand

Who is present during conferencing?

- The victim

- The offender

- Families

- support groups

Circles

- First Nations people

- Indigenous roots and drew on ABORIGINAL understandings of justice

- Case involved a 26-year-old offender with a history of alcohol abuse and 43 convictions

Where did circles start?

- 1992 Canada

Who is present during circles?

- The victim

- The offender

- The facilitator

- Community members

What do you call the person running the circle?

A keeper

How is restorative justice different from criminal justice?

Criminal justice is very punitive, legalistic

Restorative justice is very relational

What are the common needs of victims?

They need emotional, psychological, relational, and restorative justice designed to meet them in a more human-centered way

What are the first principle of restorative justice?

Justice requires that we work to heal victims, offenders, and communities injured by crime

-- primary and secondary victims

-- community

-- offenders

What is the second principle of restorative justice?

Victims, offenders, and communities should have the opportunity for active involvement in the justice process as early and as fully as they wish

-- defendants have few incentives to assume responsibility

-- victims are too often "pieces of evidence"

-- Community participation is limited

What is the third principle of restorative justice?

We must rethink the relative roles and responsibilities of government and community in promoting justice: the government is responsible for preserving a just order, while the community is responsible for establishing a just peace.

-- Government = just public order

- As imposed order increases, person's freedom decreases

-- Community = just peace

- peace requires a community's commitment

What are the three basic concepts of Restorative Justice?

- Encounter

- Reparation

- Transformation

What are the normative values of restorative justice?

- Active responsibility = taking initiative to help preserve/promote restorative values and make amends

- peaceful social life = responding to crime in ways that build harmony and community well-being

- Respect = treating all parties to a crime as persons with dignity and worth

- solidarity = the experience of support and connectedness

Justice that promotes healing involves:

- crime should be viewed as more than lawbreaking

- The criminal justice process is based on procedural justice

- the criminal justice process should focus on the harm done to people

What are the four corner post values that guide restorative justice?

- Inclusion

- Encounter

- Amends

- Reintegration

What is the goal of VOM?

The goal is to foster healing, accountability, and resolution through direct dialogue between the victim and the offender

What does it mean for each party to tell their story?

Why the offender committed the crime

How the crime affected the victim

Impact Pannels

- Group of victims

- Group of offenders

- Linked by a common kind of crime

- Not "each other's" victims or offenders

What makes impact panels different from the other three methods?

They use surrogates

What are the five elements of encounter

- Meeting

- Narrative

- Emotion

- Understanding

- Agreement

What are the elements of inclusion?

- Invitation

- Recognition

- Acceptance of the interests of the person invited

- Willingness to accept alternative approaches that better fit that individual

What is it that victims want?

They want answers

What is the main focus of the traditional legal process in this country?

The main focus is retributive justice- a system centered on determining guilt and administering punishment

What does genuine accountability mean?

Making it right with the person you harmed, not punishment, that is when you are talking about it in the the criminal justice sense

How do we view crime and law in the U.S. (what lens do we use)

We view crime with a punitive lens

- We are always looking at what crime was committed in any particular situation

What is a pattern of thinking?

It obstructs the way you see things

Ch. 4 David and Goliath, why is that story there (what does it mean)?

- Goliath stands for the enormity of crime

- David stands for the victims, offenders, and community

- King Saul stands for the government's responsibility to address crime

- Goliath was unbeatable in conventional battle

- David used unconventional methods

- Seeks to rebalance power by giving voice to those harmed and holding those responsible accountable in a constructive way, much like David confronting Goliath with truth and courage

Who is Howard Zehr?

- He is the grandfather of restorative justice

- His interests grew out of working with victim-offender reconciliation programs

- He believed that the current criminal justice "lens" views crime as lawbreaking, and justice is allocating blame and punishment

Crime is not simply lawbreaking

True

Injuries exist on several levels and are experienced by victims, communities, and offenders

True

What are some characteristics of the criminal justice view

- Crime is a violation of the law and the state

- violations create guilt

- Justice requires the state to determine guilt and impose punishment

- What laws have been broken?

- Who did it?

- What do they deserve?

What are some characteristics of the restorative justice view?

- Crime is a violation of people and relationships

- Violations create obligations

- Justice involves victims, offenders, and community members to put things right

- Who has been hurt?

- What are their needs?

- Whose obligations are these?