Juvenile Justice Reform and Restorative Justice

by Bazemore; Gordon

• ISBN13: 9781843920953
• ISBN10: 1843920956
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-01
• Publisher: Willan

Summary

During the 1990s restorative justice emerged as an international movement for criminal justice reform, and a number of countries adopted policies encouraging or requiring the use of restorative justice practices as an alternative or in addition to adversarial court proceedings. In the United States, by 1998 over 20 states have changed their juvenile justice codes to incorporate the language of restorative justice, and a dozen states were experimenting actively with restorative justice decision-making or conferencing. By 2001 almost every state in the United States had begin to experiment with such practices.This book, based on a large-scale research project funded by the National Institute of Justice and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides an overview of the restorative justice conferencing programs currently in operation in the United States, paying particular attention to the qualitative dimensions of this, based on interviews, focus groups and ethnographic observation. It provides an unrivalled view of restorative justice conferencing in practice, and what the people involved felt and thought about it.The book looks at four structural variations in the face-to-face form of restorative decision-making: family group conferences, victim-offender mediation/dialogue, neighborhood accountability boards, and peacemaking circles. An overriding concern of the book is to build and improve theory, guide future research, and to inform policy and practice in restorative justice decision-making. In doing so it addresses two issues that have received limited research emphasis in restorative justice: the lack of clear and consistent standards that can be used to gauge both the strength and consistency of restorative intervention, and the absence of testable theories of intervention that reflect what has become a rather diverse practice. In response to this the authors conclude the book with a proposed structure for principle-based evaluation designed to test emerging theories of restorative decision-making.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Foreword by Joe Hudson and Dennis Maloney	xi
Introduction	1	(26)
1 Restorative justice, restorative group conferencing, and juvenile justice	27	(16)
Introduction	27	(1)
Defining restorative justice and restorative group conferencing	27	(14)
Summary and conclusions	41	(2)
2 Principles to practice: intermediate outcomes, intervention theories, and conferencing tasks	43	(53)
Introduction	43	(1)
Dimensions of the vision	44	(3)
Intervention theories: connecting outcomes and practice	47	(1)
Part 1: Repairing harm in the conferencing environment: dimensions of repair	48	(7)
Part 2: Stakeholder involvement in the conferencing environment: dimensions of participation and process	55	(13)
Part 3: Community/government role transformation in the conferencing environment: dimensions of system change and community-building	68	(20)
Chapter summary and transition: principles to research agendas	88	(5)
Guiding research questions	93	(1)
Notes	94	(2)
3 Prevalence and scope of restorative decision-making: findings from a national inventory and survey on restorative conferencing for youth	96	(40)
Introduction	96	(1)
Methodology	97	(7)
Findings	104	(16)
'Restorativeness' in conferencing model vision and philosophy	120	(9)
Summary and discussion	129	(4)
Conclusions	133	(2)
Notes	135	(1)
4 Methodology for the qualitative study and description of conference stages and phases	136	(16)
Overview of study conceptualization	136	(1)
The qualitative case study design	137	(5)
Potential contributions to theory and practice	142	(1)
Characteristics of programs in the qualitative case study: a profile	143	(3)
Conferencing stages and phases: an overview and dialogue	146	(5)
Summary and conclusions	151	(1)
5 Repairing harm in the conferencing environment	152	(42)
Introduction	152	(3)
Moving toward repair in conferencing stages and phases	155	(28)
Summary and conclusions	183	(2)
Observational case studies: issues, concerns, and resolutions	185	(9)
6 Stakeholder involvement in the conferencing environment	194	(44)
Introduction	194	(2)
The value of inclusion: general support for stakeholder involvement and model variation	196	(2)
Dimensions of involvement in conference stages and phases	198	(23)
Summary and conclusions	221	(3)
Observational case studies: problems, concerns, and resolutions	224	(12)
Note	236	(2)
7 Community/government relationship and role transformation	238	(86)
Introduction	238	(6)
Part 1: Vision and practice of systemic reform: mission and professional role change	244	(27)
Part 2: Visions and practice of community and community-building	271	(39)
Summary and conclusions	310	(3)
Observational case studies: more and less than meets the eye-case studies in conferencing and community-building	313	(9)
Notes	322	(2)
8 Looking back and moving forward: conclusions, implications, and an agenda for future research	324	(25)
Introduction	324	(1)
Looking back: general implications of this study and the challenge of conferencing policy and research	325	(4)
Summary of findings	329	(3)
Looking forward: toward a research agenda for restorative decision-making	332	(17)
Epilogue	349	(3)
Notes	352	(2)
Appendix	354	(5)
References	359	(16)
Index	375