A Critical View of Conferencing
| Author | Jenny Bargen |
| Published date | 01 December 1995 |
| Date | 01 December 1995 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00048658950280S112 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
A
Critical View of Conferencing
Jenny Bargen‘
Dr
LaPrairie’s article is a useful and informative comment on ‘new’ initiatives
in criminal justice processing which seem to have stirred a fire in the bellies
of criminal justice practitioners in many parts of the world. In this brief
comment, I wish to point out some issues which seem to have been
overlooked in the rush to accept, adapt and adopt these initiatives, and which
are largely absent from both
Dr
LaPrairie’s piece and the literature on
conferencing upon which she draws.
Her abstract suggests that the article is merely a ‘preliminary exploration of
two new approaches in criminal justice which have important implications for
Aboriginal and indigenous communities’. Her piece does indeed suggest that
indigenous people have played an important part in the development
of
Sentencing Circles in Canada, and that the majority of offenders and
communities in which Sentencing Circles operate are from indigenous
communities, In contrast, the developments in family conferencing in
Australia, apart from some variants in Northern New South Wales (Juvenile
Justice Advisory Council 1993:
108)
which bear little resemblance to the
conferences discussed by LaPrairie, have only oblique implications
for
Aboriginal communities as a result of the discriminatory operation of
Australian criminal justice. An appallingly high proportion of Aboriginal
people, adult and young, are drawn daily into the net of criminal justice
processing. Given that the number of Aboriginal young people who are
cautioned by police
or
who receive the ‘benefit’ of a sentencing disposition
other than custody is proportionately much lower than for non-Aboriginal
young people in all parts of Australia (Luke
&
Cunneen 1995; Gale,
Wundersitz
&
Bailey-Harris 1989) it seems to be unduly optimistic to expect
that developments in conferencing in Australia will positively impact on
Aboriginal communities without significantly greater input into their
development from Aboriginal people themselves. This seems unlikely given
the discriminatory practices which have been well documented
in
research on
Aboriginal young people and policing over recent decades (see, eg, Cunneen
1994).
Dr
LaPrairie gives the impression that all forms of conferencing in Australia
are closely modelled on the New Zealand Family Group Conferences (FGCs).
It is true that the developments in New Zealand occurred because of Maori
dissatisfaction with the enormous proportion of and negative impact on their
young people going through the system which was in operation prior to the
introduction of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act in 1989.
It was also the case that the form adopted for the FGCs is based on
‘traditional’ Maori concepts of conflict resolution (Brown 1993; Maxwell
1993). However, Braithwaite’s original and compelling theory of
‘reintegrative shaming’ (1989) was not a major influence on the New Zealand
changes. It has, in contrast, been highly significant in the Wagga experiment,
*
Faculty
of
Law,
University
of
New
South
Wales, Sydney,
2052.
100
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