Ten Years On, the ‘Three Circle’ Model of Restorative & Transformative Justice: A Tool to Combat Victimization and Recidivism

This paper had its genesis 10 years ago in the authors’ development of a communitarian ‘three circle’ model of restorative and transformative justice for a pilot restorative justice study used with serious and repeat adult offenders appearing in the Magistrates’ Courts in Western Australia. The model was designed in part to place their crimes within a context, something that rarely occurs within the mainstream adversarial criminal justice system in Australia. The model was primarily designed to provide victims of crime with the best outcome and offenders with the opportunity to provide apology and restitution, as well as take responsibility for their actions. The three circles, each including two facilitators, are: Circle 1: consists of the perpetrator who has pleaded guilty to a specified criminal act together with his/her family and/or friends; Circle 2: consists of the victim(s) of the crime together with their family and/or friends. Circle 3: consists of a combination of the first two circles, tasked to seek, if possible, a mutually agreeable resolution that culminates in a report to present to the Magistrate in court to use in mitigation of sentencing. Importantly, although the 30-month study had socially and economically significant results, 10 years after its completion there is still no restorative justice program in the adult courts in Western Australia. Because of this, the authors also set out to question the state government’s motivation in largely ignoring this successful process.     

Kirchheimer Revisited: Party Polarisation,Party Convergence,or Party Decline in the German Party System

The 2005 German parliamentary elections produced two parties claiming victory, the inability to form a government, and Germany's second post-war grand coalition government. This article explores the peculiarities in the contemporary dynamic of the German party system. It considers the strategy and motivation of parties and the effect of party competition. A key focus is to revisit and evaluate the predictive power of Otto Kirchheimer's ‘end of ideology’ proposition in the German case. On the one hand, mainstream parties seem to be converging at the ideological centre across Western Europe. At the same time, some party polarisation within the party system is evident as more marginal parties such as those of the far left and far right have gained votes at the expense of the mainstream parties in recent elections. A third possibility is that both of these circumstances have produced a political void with voters becoming increasingly apathetic and non-ideological. This paper argues that in the aggregate, trends do not reflect the predictions of Kirchheimer.     

Children’s attitudes towards animal cruelty: Exploration of predictors and socio-demographic variations

ABSTRACT

Assessing the risk for animal cruelty is imperative, yet understudied and problematic due to the sensitivity of the topic. Early prevention is critical, yet very little research examines cruelty when it first appears in childhood. The aim of this study was to explore children’s attitudes towards types of animal cruelty, to investigate potential demographic differences, and to examine potential associations between acceptance of cruelty and cognitive and affective factors that place children ‘at-risk’ for cruelty perpetration. Questionnaire data was collected from 1127 children in schools. The results indicate that cruelty attitudes are predicted by some demographic variables such as urban living, being male, younger age and not having pets, but depend on the type of animal cruelty. Acceptance of cruelty predicted low compassion and low reported humane behaviour towards animals. Acceptance of cruelty was predicted by negative attitudes towards animals, lower beliefs in animal minds and low attachment to pets, signifying the importance of targeting such variables in future prevention programmes. This study is an original contribution to research into childhood animal cruelty in the general population, with implications for designing and implementing early prevention programmes that tackle problematic attitudes to cruelty.