The political rationality of restorative justice
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Author | Giuseppe Maglione |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480618756364 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480618756364
Theoretical Criminology
2019, Vol. 23(4) 545 –562
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480618756364
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The political rationality of
restorative justice
Giuseppe Maglione
Edinburgh Napier University, UK
Abstract
This article investigates the political conditions that have enabled the development
of restorative justice, in England and Wales, over the last 40 years. By applying a
governmentality approach, it conceptualizes the emergence of restorative justice as
a response to distinctive political problematics, enacted by a range of governmental
technologies and driven by a combination of competing political rationalities. In so doing,
the article seeks to shed light on the assemblage of ambivalent principles and values that
constitute restorative justice by linking them to conflicting political contingencies. This
could have implications in understanding both the fragmentary growth of restorative
justice in England and Wales, and, more generally, the political roots of restorative
justice policies, programmes and practices beyond the British borders.
Keywords
Ethopolitics, governmentality, Michel Foucault, restorative justice
Introduction
Criminologists have extensively explored the political context of restorative justice from
a range of theoretical and normative angles (Braithwaite, 1999; Dignan, 2005; Hoyle and
Cunneen, 2010; Johnstone, 2011; Marshall, 1996; Newburn and Crawford, 2003;
Woolford, 2009; Wright, 1996). This article can be located within the limited province of
the literature that applies a governmentality-oriented analysis to this subject (Lippens,
2015; O’Malley, 2009; Pavlich, 2005; Richards, 2011). From this perspective, it offers a
historically grounded, critical investigation into the conditions of possibility of
Corresponding author:
Giuseppe Maglione, School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University, Sighthill Campus, Edinburgh,
EH11 4BN, UK.
Email: G.Maglione@napier.ac.uk
756364TCR0010.1177/1362480618756364Theoretical CriminologyMaglione
research-article2018
Article
546 Theoretical Criminology 23(4)
restorative justice. The article revolves around the idea that the historical emergence of
this field in England and Wales over the last 40 years, has been gradually possible due to
the parallel rise of ethopolitics (Rose, 1996b, 1999a). This is a combination of ‘political
rationalities’ (Foucault, 1982, 1991, 2008) which informs the regulation of ‘economic
activity, social life and individual conduct’ (Rose and Miller, 1992: 174) by shaping in
distinctive ways individual and social freedoms, identities and desires.
The article starts by describing the methodological and theoretical orientations that
drive this work. After drawing a working definition of restorative justice, it maps out a
number of context-specific political issues and relative responses (i.e. problematics) and
political processes and practices (i.e. technologies) relevant to the rise of this model of
justice. The article then distils the rationalities that characterize this political landscape,
and their subjectivizing effects. Some conclusive reflections are also offered. In taking
this approach, I hope to deepen the understanding of the development of restorative jus-
tice by linking the emergence of this ‘new’ frontier of contemporary penality to specific
political mentalities. This could have implications both in terms of reframing the patchy
growth of this field in England and Wales and of re-thinking the political conditions of
restorative justice policies, programmes and practices, beyond the British borders.
Methodological and theoretical considerations
Governmentality is an analytical grid that aims to reconstruct the ‘reasoned way of gov-
erning best, and at the same time, [the] reflection on the best possible way of governing’
(Foucault, 2008: 2). This framework is concerned with how governmental practice (i.e.
process of ‘direct[ing] […] the conduct of others’ (Foucault, 1982: 225)) is problema-
tized and rationalized by social and individual actors (Foucault, 1991: 87).
Governmentality considers a domain much broader than state-based juridical operations
by connecting the regulation of social and collective conducts with epistemological,
moral and ontological issues. In this way, it opens up new spaces of political contesta-
tion, beyond the critique of state politics. From this perspective, the governmental prac-
tice is investigated in terms of problematics of government, that is, by focusing on the
fluid set of predicaments and responses related to economic, social and individual action,
contingently elaborated by a plurality of actors (Rose and Miller, 1992: 174). The second
step is to explore the implementation of responses to such political problems. This entails
an outline of the political technologies that ‘shape, normalize and instrumentalize the
conduct, thought, decisions and aspirations of others in order to achieve the objects they
consider desirable’ (Miller and Rose, 1990: 8). From examining these two dimensions it
is possible to infer those political rationalities, which, through strategic combinations
(Rose et al., 2006: 88), drive the governmental practice (Rose and Miller, 1992: 175).
Problematics, technologies and rationalities are reconstructed by piecing together scien-
tific knowledges, ethical doctrines and legal/policy narratives on the matters (problemat-
ics), modes (technologies) and logics (rationalities) of government, circulating in the
relevant context and encoded in a variety of texts (Miller and Rose, 1990: 4). From this
analytical viewpoint, the article argues that ‘restorative justice’ emerged when marginal
criminal justice practices ‘crossed’ a certain epistemological/political threshold. That is,
when their language, assumptions and justifications became consistent with pre-existing
cultural formations integral to specific ways of directing the conduct of others. Such an
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