186
5.1 Introduction
As has been illustrated, part one of the investigation into the concept of community within restorative practice identified a reparative meso-community within panel practices on the basis of surrogate relational bonds within case discourses. This notional meso-community has added significantly to the overall community-led ethos within the reparation panel process. However, within this process, potential remains for the dilution of restorative principles and community based ideals due to an over-reliance on government sponsored resources and managerial demands. Indeed, such a conflict between managerial and community led ideals and between informal and formal modes of crime resolution lies at the heart of the theoretical and practical exploration of the restorative justice paradigm generally. There have been a number of critical examples within the socio-legal literature of informal justice processes being seen to increase rather than decrease the sphere of state influence over minor criminal disputes.1 Other
scholars have downplayed the apparent divisions between state control and community ownership.2
This chapter, part two of the reparative community investigation, provides an overview of the theoretical arguments surrounding the conflict between managerial and community ownership of restorative justice processes. It examines the dangers inherent in over-idealising the concept of community and investigates the potential within reparative practices for power abuses. It analyses the nature of the conflict within other comparable restorative models and, finally, examines how successfully the reparation model has managed to balance these competing ideologies in its own right. This, as will be illustrated, has important implications for the nature of the restorative principles and community ethos utilised within the Irish reparation model going forward.
1 See for example, Christine B. Harringdon, Shadow Justice: The Ideology and Institutionalizing of
Alternatives to Court (Westwood, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985); and, Richard Abel, The Politics of Informal Justice Volume 1: The American Experience (New York; London: Academic Press, 1982).
2 Roger Matthews, ‘Reassessing Informal Justice’ in (ed.), Roger Matthews, Informal Justice? (London:
187
5.2 Managerialism and the Threat to Community Ethos
For many theorists, fully fledged claims by community led justice models that they are fundamentally different to other more conventional, court dominated, professional justice processes should be viewed with caution. For Richard Abel, neighbourhood based, informal legal institutions will ‘constantly speak about community’; however, what they actually achieve is the individualising of criminal conflicts and grievances.3
Furthermore, such ‘informal justice’ processes may be seen to ‘satisfy nostalgia for a mythical past’; however, in reality they merely result in tightening the grip of state social control.4 Abel has further argued that, for these informal institutions,
‘what they actually require and reproduce is a collection of isolated individuals circumscribed by residence. Informalism appropriates the socialist ideal of collectivity but robs it of its content. The individual grievant must appear alone before the informal institution, deprived of the support of such natural allies as family, friends, work mates, even neighbours’.5
In this regard, Abel was specifically addressing the role of informal institutions in the management of conflicts such as domestic disputes and consumer grievances. Nevertheless the same principle can be transferred to the criminal justice arena. Indeed, as this chapter will go on to examine, this ‘individualising’ of the conflict could potentially offer a cautionary warning on reparation panel practices in which participating offenders have attended without the wider help and support of friends and family members. Cohen has also cautioned against the true nature of the community based ownership of justice ideal, arguing that criminal justice models appearing to promote community interests can alternatively serve to extend and strengthen
3 Richard Abel, The Politics of Informal Justice Volume 1: The American Experience (New York; London:
Academic Press, 1982) 289.
4 Ibid, 276. 5 Ibid, 289.
188
government influence and power over such practices.6 For Cohen, such programmes
have been,
‘sponsored, financed, rationalised, staffed and evaluated by state-employed
personnel…it is unlikely, to say the least, that the very same interests and forces which destroyed the traditional community – bureaucracy, professionalism, centralisation, rationalisation – can now be used to reverse the process’.7
Moreover, according to Garland, previous decades have seen a change in the objectives and priorities of criminal justice organisations and a reworking of management styles and practices. Sentencing has changed from ‘a discretionary art of individualised dispositions’ to a ‘rigid and mechanical application of penalty guidelines and mandatory sentences’, while probation and parole agencies have ‘de-emphasised the social work ethos that used to dominate their work and instead present themselves as providers of inexpensive, community based punishments, orientated towards the monitoring of offenders and the management of risk’.8 For Garland, this configuration of criminal
justice aims represents ‘a new and all-pervasive managerialism’. Within this managerialism concept, ‘specific agencies and organisations, performance indicators and management measures have narrowed professional discretion and tightly regulated working practice’ with an emphasis now on the ‘cost effective management of risks and resources’.9 In a similar vein, Shapland has viewed the concept of managerialism as one
that highlights the importance of ‘efficient administration by salaried officials, managing to hit a basket of targets within tight time limits’.10
6 Stanley Cohen, Visions of Social Control (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985) 123. 7 Ibid.
8 David Garland, The Culture of Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 18. Although Garland is
specifically concerned about a US based justice model, the same potential for state sponsored domination can be illustrated within reparation practices.
9 Ibid, 18-19.
10 Joanna Shapland, Justice, Community and Civil Society. A Contested Terrain (Cullompton: Willan