Restoration and Retribution: How Including Retributive Components Affects the Acceptability of Restorative Justice Procedures

Two studies investigated people’s perceptions of the acceptability of restorative justice procedures for handling crimes that differ in severity. Results from Study 1 supported our hypothesis that as crimes increase in seriousness, people require a restorative justice procedure that also has a possible retributive component (i.e. a prison sentence). Study 1 also demonstrated that individuals assigned lower prison sentences for offenders who successfully completed a restorative procedure as compared to a traditional court procedure. The results from Study 2 replicated those from Study 1, as well as demonstrating that offenders who failed to successfully complete the restorative procedure received no reduction in prison sentence. These findings suggest that in order for citizens to view a restorative justice procedure as an acceptable alternative to the traditional court system for serious crimes, the procedure must allow for the option of some retributive measures.

Why We Punish in the Name of Justice: Just Desert versus Value Restoration and the Role of Social Identity

Two different notions of justice might motivate people to demand punishment of an offender. The offense could be seen as lowering the victim’s and community’s status/power position relative to the offender, requiring a degradation of the offender to restore a moral balance (just desert). Or, the offense could be seen as questioning community values, requiring a reaffirmation of those values through social consensus (value restoration). Two studies referring to tax evasion and social welfare fraud yielded supportive evidence. Just desert was related to traditional punishment, especially when participants did not identify with a relevant inclusive community (Australians). Value restoration was related to alternative (restorative) punishment, especially when community values were regarded as diverse and requiring consensualization. It tended to be related to traditional punishment when community values were regarded as clear and consensual.

Outlining the Shadow of the Axe—On Restorative Justice and the Use of Trial and Punishment

Most proponents of restorative justice admit to the need to find a well defined place for the use of traditional trial and punishment alongside restorative justice processes. Concrete answers have, however, been wanting more often than not. John Braithwaite is arguably the one who has come the closest, and here I systematically reconstruct and critically discuss the rules or principles suggested by him for referring cases back and forth between restorative justice and traditional trial and punishment. I show that we should be sceptical about at least some of the answers provided by Braithwaite, and, thus, that the necessary use of traditional punishment continues to pose a serious challenge to restorative justice, even at its current theoretical best.

On Justifying Punishment: The Discrepancy Between Words and Actions

This article reveals a discrepancy between the actual and stated motives for punishment. Two studies conducted with nationally representative samples reveal that people support laws designed on the utilitarian principle of deterrence in the abstract, yet reject the consequences of the same when they are applied. Study 1 (N = 133) found that participants assigned punishment to criminals in a manner consistent with a retributive theory of justice rather than deterrence. The verbal justifications for punishment given by these same respondents, however, failed to correlate with their actual retributive behavior. Study 2 (N = 125) again found that people have favorable attitudes towards utilitarian laws and rate them as “fair” in the abstract, but frequently reject them when they are instantiated in ways that support utilitarian theories. These studies reveal people’s inability to know their own motivations, and show that one consequence of this ignorance is to generate support for laws that they ultimately find unjust.

Revisiting Kantian Retributivism to Construct a Justification of Punishment

The standard view of Kant’s retributivism, as well as its more recent reworking in the ‘limited’ or ‘partial’ retributivist reading are, it is argued here, inadequate accounts of Kant on punishment. In the case of the former, the view is too limited and superficial, and in the latter it is simply inaccurate as an interpretation of Kant. Instead, this paper argues that a more sophisticated and accurate rendering of Kant on punishment can be obtained by looking to his construction of the concept of justice. In so doing, not only is a superior account of Kant furnished, but also one up to the task of resolving the vexed issue of justifying legal punishment.

Terrorism and relative justice

Terrorist violence and violent justice responses have much in common. While contextually dependant, both forms of violence lay claim to contestred legitimacies. The relationships between terrorism and justice responses require both theoretical and empirical examination if the prospects for controlling the violence they perpetrate is to be sharpened.

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Why criminal harms matter: Plato’s abiding insight in the Laws

Commentators have contested the role of resulting harm in criminal law since the time of Plato. Unfortunately, they have neglected what may be not only the best discussion of the issue, but also the first—namely, Plato’s one-paragraph discussion in the Laws. Plato’s discussion succeeds in reconciling two, seemingly irreconcilable viewpoints that till now have been in stalemate. Thus, Plato reconciles the view, that an offender’s desert is solely a function of his subjective willingness to act in disregard of the legitimate interests of others, with the view that criminal sentences can appropriately be made to depend upon how indignant, angry, and upset society is at an offender based upon the results of his culpable conduct. In doing so, Plato casts light on retributive theories of punishment by suggesting that an adjudicator can be committed to retribution and yet rightly believe that it is inappropriate to give an offender the full punishment he deserves. He also lays a basis for the view that causation, rather being predicates for the just punishment of offenders toward whom the public is intuitively angry for harm, is the consequence of the public’s being intuitively angry at offenders for harm.

Influencing public policy: an embedded criminologist reflects on California prison reform

Criminologists bemoan their lack of influence on U.S. crime policy, believing that the justice system would be improved if their research findings were more central in decision making. I had an opportunity to test that notion as I participated in California’s historic attempt to reform its prisons over the past 4 years. I became an embedded criminologist, where I was able to observe and contribute to the inner workings of state government. This article reports on my accomplishments with respect to fostering research activities and shifting the department’s focus towards prisoner reintegration. It discusses some of the lessons I learned, including the personal toll that such work entails, the importance of the timing of policy initiatives, and the power of rigorous methodology and clear communication. I conclude by recommending that other policy-oriented criminologists seek out similar experiences, as I believe our academic skills are uniquely suited and ultimately necessary to create a justice system that does less harm.

Mind The Gap

The governance phenomenon brings law back to its very ‘origin’, namely, law-making (‘Recht-Fertigung’), and reveals that law is not anchored to a specific ‘polis’ or to Hobbesian statehood, but is able to pursue different forms of ‘the common’ as long as its paradox function is fulfilled. Law recognises and develops normative standards for the creation of social structures while also leading a continuous battle against any restrictions to democracy, common wealth and justice connected to these structures. Law here acts ‘politically’ and in affinity to social movements that struggle against any form of social ‘immunisation’. This article analyses the conditions of this affinity and its consequences for the concept of ‘justice’.

Writing the Rwandan Genocide: The Justice and Politics of Witnessing after the Event

This paper tries to read together three texts that refer to the Rwandan genocide and to draw attention to certain paradoxes that emerge from the way in which the texts might be said to talk to and past each other. The overall intention is to throw light on the complications in witnessing such an event, and to themes of justice and politics that arise.

A Letter from the Tax Office: Compliance Effects of Informational and Interpersonal Justice

It has been argued that authorities attract greater compliance when they treat people according to principles of interactional and procedural justice. Set in the context of taxation, the present research investigates the effects on behavioral compliance of reminder letters adopting principles of informational and interpersonal fairness compared with a standard reminder notice. Study 1 with 199 students confirmed that both fairness letters were regarded as fairer than the standard letter. In Study 2, a field experiment, 2052 Australian taxpayers who had an obligation to file a tax declaration but failed to file on time were randomly sent one of the three reminder letters. The two fairness letters yielded a significantly greater compliance rate than the control letter.

Social Justice and Communication: Mill, Marx, and Habermas

This article concerns how one may theorize a social justice of communication. The article argues that the theory of democracy cannot neglect an analysis of communication and that, indeed, a social justice of communication can be identified in the discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas’s “deliberative” theory of democracy. The socio-political analyses of communication in John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx are examined as precursors to Habermas’s position because they are useful for setting off the unique synthesis of the liberal and critical traditions that Habermas develops. Such a social justice of communication shows how the communicative mediation of the public sphere can ameliorate the tension between individual autonomy and the solidarity of group membership by communicatively empowering individuals under conditions of mutual respect and equal dignity.

Justice Under Global Capitalism?

Under conditions of polycentric globalisation, a positive concept of justice is definitively impossible. Justice is aimed at removing unjust situations, not creating just ones. The justice of fundamental rights coerces expansive social systems into self-restriction. Human rights in particular take the role of counter-principles to communicative violations of body and soul, a protest against inhumanities of communication, without it ever being possible to say positively what the conditions of humanly just communication might be. The article analyses some consequences of this view for social counter-movements and counter-institutions.

To Discipline and Publish: Scottsboro and Narratives of Delinquency

With the economics of racism of the 1930s and 1950s American South in mind, our essay explores the relationship between the act of writing and institutional penology. Taking an obscure, but visceral autobiographical account by Paterson and Conrad (Scottsboro Boy, Garden City Doubleday, 1950), we examine how discipline, punishment, and institutional identity emerge out of publishing, or, as Foucault put it, “the power of writing.” Narratives of delinquency born out of a racialized penal economy tend to resist attempts to tame the criminal, making institutional survival a productive discourse, and its articulation, a unique revolutionary act.

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The lives and crimes of African-American women on death row: a case study

Few criminal justice topics have garnered as much attention as capital punishment. This voluminous literature ranges from constitutional and procedural issues to race issues and gender issues. While the intellectual and legal community has paid a great deal of attention to the role of race in capital punishment, as well as the role of gender in capital punishment, the extant literature is lacking with regard to African-American women and the death penalty. To be clear, the lack of literature is not because there are no African-American women on death row. This article attempts to fill a void in the capital punishment literature through a qualitative analysis that explores the lives and crimes of African-American women on death row.

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Does Moral Conviction Really Override Concerns About Procedural Justice? A Reexamination of the Value Protection Model

A large research literature on procedural justice demonstrates that people are more accepting of decisions that they do not feel are advantageous or fair when those decisions are arrived at using just procedures. Recently, several papers (Skitka, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 28:588–597, 2002; Skitka and Mullen, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 28:1419–1429, 2002) have argued that these procedural mechanisms do not have a significant influence when the decision made concerns issues about which those involved have strong moral feelings (“a moral mandate”). A reanalysis of the data in these two studies indicates that, contrary to the strong position taken by the authors, i.e. that “when people have a moral mandate about an outcome, any means justifies the mandated end” (Skitka, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 28:594, 2002), the justice of decision-making procedures is consistently found to significantly influence people’s reactions to decisions by authorities and institutions even when their moral mandates are threatened.

Does Incapacitation Reduce Crime?

Questions and answers about incapacitation abound in all discussions about criminal justice policy. They are among the most pressing of all research issues, yet estimates about the incapacitation effect on crime vary considerably, and most are based on very old and incomplete estimates of the longitudinal pattern of criminal careers. This paper provides an overview of the incapacitation issue, highlights information on recent estimates of criminal careers that are useful to the incapacitation model, and outlines an ambitious research agenda for continued and expanded work on incapacitation and crime that centers on developing better estimates of the characteristics of criminal careers and their relevance to policy choices.

Theoretical Unification in Justice and Beyond

The goal of scientific work is to understand more and more by less and less. In this effort, theoretical unification plays a large part. There are two main types of theoretical unification—unification of different theories of the same field of phenomena and unification of theories of different fields of phenomena. Both types are usually a surprise; even when vigorously pursued, their form, when they finally appear, may differ radically from preconceptions. This paper examines a series of 21 unification surprises in the study of justice and beyond, 16 in the study of justice and 5 in the unification of 3 fundamental sociobehavioral forces—justice, status, and power—and the subsequent unification of the three sociobehavioral forces with identity and with happiness.

Youth, Police Legitimacy and Informal Contact

This paper explores the under-researched topic of young people’s attitudes towards police in two studies using structural equation modelling. The first study examines the influence of police legitimacy on the willingness of young people to assist police. The second study examines the impact of informal contact with police during a community policing project on young people’s willingness to assist police. Findings show that young people who view police as legitimate are more willing to assist police. Participation in the community policing project had a significant and positive influence on young people’s willingness to assist police independent of young people’s attitudes about police legitimacy.