Book Reviews
| Author | Nova Inkpen,Russ Immarigeon,Nikolas Rose,Andrew Rutherford,John Graham,Paul Rock,Colin Webster,David Downes |
| Published date | 01 November 2003 |
| Date | 01 November 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/146680250334005 |
| Subject Matter | Reviews |
Andrew von Hirsch, Julian V. Roberts, Anthony Bottoms, Kent Roach and
Mara Schiff (eds)
Restorative Justice: Competing or Reconcilable Paradigms?
Oxford & Portland, OR: Hart, 2003. 348 pp. (incl. index). £35.00 (hbk)
ISBN 1–84113–273-X
•Reviewed by Russ Immarigeon, Victim Offender Mediation Association,
USA
With too few exceptions, the relationship between restorative justice programs
or initiatives and the everyday practice of the criminal justice system has always
fallen uncomfortably somewhere between tenuous and tense. In the United
States, early advocates of victim offender reconciliation programs worried
whether probation departments that were then starting to use ‘restorative
justice’ were in fact co-opting the meaning and methods of these new measures.
Subsequently, as restorative justice has grown in popularity and use, concerns
have continued about whether its expanded use by state agencies, not to
mention private programs, is ‘widening the net’ or diminishing its original
objectives.
Those advocates, practitioners, policy analysts, program managers, research
evaluators and others who worry about such things are right to worry about
them. Similar concerns have also been central to the development of past and
present reform initiatives, such as community service, restitution, or so-called
‘drug courts’. These concerns come with good reason, because it is often the
case that levels of control, monitoring and punitiveness do indeed rise as a
consequence of these measures. Most importantly, perhaps, little evidence
exists, or is shown in readily reportable form, that these ‘alternatives’ mitigate
the generally harsh state of penal matters.
Still, it is fair to say that in none of these or other domains has critical
attention been given so explicitly, frequently and in such depth, as with
restorative justice. Despite the wealth of materials, and especially edited
volumes, on restorative justice, this new volume is a welcome addition to the
body of work that is struggling hard to establish a field of study, as much as a
form and practice of social intervention. The 16 essays in this volume were
originally presented at seminars held, first, at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
in October 2000 and, second, at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in
BOOK REVIEWS
Criminal Justice
© 2003 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi.
www.sagepublications.com
1466–8025(200311) 3:4;
Vol. 3(4): 413–429; 041821
413
May 2001. These articles address theoretical and empirical aspects of
restorative justice and they are the strongest evidence available of the serious-
ness with which scholars and practitioners alike take the ‘conflict’ between
restorative justice and criminal justice, a subject that is at the centre of
restorative justice’s future.
Most of the editors, and several of the authors, of this volume are also
veterans of ‘the sentencing wars’, wherein a vibrant mixture of politicians,
policymakers, philosophers and researchers have been struggling for decades
over methods of controlling, tempering or redirecting judicial (and legislative)
discretion that is applied to sanctioning men and women (boys and girls) who
have been adjudicated of one offence or another. This background gives them
some advantage as they try to gauge the possibilities (and the limitations) of
integrating restorative justice into traditional and contemporary criminal
justice sentencing practices, where the tenuousness and the tension mentioned
earlier is most likely to come into play.
John Braithwaite opens the volume with an overview of the basic principles
of restorative justice. Braithwaite comes to restorative justice through earlier
work on regulating corporate malfeasance and theorizing reintegrative forms of
shame, so his restorative justice lens bends his vision somewhat differently, and
not unexpectedly, from other authors (Lode Walgrave, Jim Dignan, Daniel van
Ness and Kathleen Daly, for instance) who have also written extensively about
approaches to restorative justice and come to the subject from different career
paths and personal beliefs.
Given that the volume lacks an introductory essay, it is necessary to locate a
foundational basis for assessing this collection. Essays that may serve this
function include those by Andrew von Hirsch, Andrew Ashworth and Clifford
Shearing on specifying aims and limits for a ‘Making Amends’ restorative
justice model of sanctioning, Antony Duff on the relationship between
restorative and retribution and Anthony Bottoms, who brings some socio-
logical perspective to the fore. Still, the articles are strong throughout and a
case could be made that such a traditional beginning, as an introduction is
unnecessary.
Interestingly, in any case, von Hirsch’s early work on criminal sentencing
was often misinterpreted when it was brought into general policy development
settings. Ironically, his arguments, which revolved around the proportionality
of sentences as well as the length and punitiveness of such sentences, were
crisply stated, certainly more so than those of restorative justice. Yet they too
were misappropriated or misplaced. With Ashworth and Shearing, von Hirsch,
who hopefully will say more elsewhere about restorative justice, struggles to set
up a ‘Making Amends’ model of restorative justice that includes proportional-
ity concerns. One advantage of such a scheme, these authors argue, is that
within the context of limited scope, it may be possible to target specific cases
more accurately and appropriately, controlling caseload size in the process. Jim
Dignan also makes a case for clear constraints on restorative justice
applications.
Criminal Justice 3(4)414
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