Book Reviews
| Author | John Pitts |
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0964663903012004012 |
| Subject Matter | Reviews |
ELMAR WEITEKAMP AND HANS-JURGEN KERNER (eds), Restorative Justice in
Context: International Practice and Directions. Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2003,
368 pp., £50 (hbk).
ELMAR WEITEKAMP AND HANS-JURGEN KERNER (eds), Restorative Justice: Theoreti-
cal Foundations. Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2002, 372 pp., £50 (hbk);
A. CRAWFORD AND T. NEWBURN, Youth Offending and Restorative Justice. Cul-
lompton: Willan Publishing, 2003, 256 pp., £40 (hbk).
In the opening chapter of Restorative Justice: Theoretical Foundations (TF), we learn
that in 2002, 40 countries sponsored a resolution urging the UN to explore the
adoption of restorative principles. Meanwhile, all over the world, aspects of restora-
tive justice are being incorporated into criminal law. Clearly, restorative justice (RJ)
is an idea whose time has come. However, the emergence of this global social move-
ment rooted in a critique of formal, retributive, justice systems, parallels the rise of
what David Garland has called a ‘culture of control’, characterized by ‘zero tolerance’
policing, pre-emptive intervention with ‘at risk’ populations and ever greater reliance
upon the prison.
Could the emergence of these apparently antipathetic developments be a coinci-
dence? Or is there, as Peter Linsdtrom asks in Restorative Justice in Context (IC), a
‘hidden link’ between ‘zero tolerance’ and restorative justice? The link, Lindstrom
argues, is both economic and logistical. Whereas 15 years ago, only one in six young
offenders aged 15 to17 was brought before the Swedish juvenile court, today’s zero
tolerance policing strategies mean that this ratio has shrunk to one in three and this
threatens to place intolerable strains upon the system. To cope with this problem of
over-supply, low-level offenders are diverted out of the system into RJ programmes,
leaving their more serious or persistent peers to face the full force of the law.
In a similar vein, Chris Cunneen (TF) points to an increasingly bifurcated Aus-
tralian youth justice system in which minor offenders tend to be dealt with via RJ
while their more serious counterparts are subject to far more punitive responses,
including mandatory ‘three-strikes’ imprisonment. However, there is a further twist
because, as Cunneen argues, this bifurcation:
... is not simply along the basis of legal categories. It also occurs along
racialised boundaries . . . Thus one political irony is that at the very time
restorative justice is aligning itself with what it perceives to be indigenous
mechanisms of resolving disputes and conflicts, indigenous and minority youth
in practice are facing the harshest outcomes available from the traditional justice
system. (p. 32)
Thomas Trenczek (IC) commenting upon this co-optation of RJ into retributive
justice systems observes that, the communitarian claims of RJ notwithstanding,
‘. . . coercion is always lurking in the background’ (p. 272).
The interdependency of RJ and formal, retributive, justice systems is illustrated in
the useful model developed by Daniel Van Ness (TF), who notes that a fully restora-
tive system, one which conforms to the principles informing RJ and serves as an
alternative to, rather than an adjunct of, retributive systems is a rarity. Indeed, it
appears that elements of restoration can be introduced at virtually any point in the
system. Thus, Raymond Corrado and his co-authors argue for the inclusion of a
restorative element for incarcerated, multi-problem, violent youth, while Luc Roberts
and Tony Peters champion ‘restorative detention’ as ‘a new objective of prison praxis’,
arguing like Corrado, that the absence of evidence of positive outcomes should not
BOOK REVIEWS 565
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