MEMORIA DESCRIPTIVA GENERAL DEL PROYECTO DE INSTALACIONES ELECTRICAS
IE 06 INSTALACIONES SS.HH SALA DE MAQUINAS
The second important element within this conflict between theoretical idealism and the practical reality of managing reparation apologies leads on from the problems of absent victims and relates to the practiced method of apology delivery within panel contract agreements. Within a high number of reparation cases managed between both
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programme models, apologies have been delivered in written form due to the absence of directly participating victims.32 Many of these written apologies were long pieces,
numbering several pages and appeared to take a lot of time and effort to complete. Furthermore, as previously identified during the outlining of reparation panel practice and procedure within Chapter 2, these written apologies could be addressed to a single individual or a number of different people within a diverse group. Broadening the recipient pool of written apologies in this way enabled panellists to highlight accountability concerns and substantiate the level of harm caused by the offence. It also helped to widen the scope of the offending to include other community members such as family members, friends and business owners. Garda officers who had been assaulted or verbally abused would also be included on occasion. This also served to widen the communitarian ethos in that participants were told that these officers were also members of the community, and were providing a valuable service to that community, sometimes at great personal risk to themselves. Through subtle coaxing by panellists, participating offenders were observed recognising and pinpointing both direct victims and indirect victims such as their own parents and family members, as well as the victim’s significant others. Arresting Garda officers, shop owners, bar managers and security guards have been written letters of apology on occasion, some of which were received. Others received a face-to-face apology. All were listed within panel discussions as additional victims of offences such as theft, public disorder and assault. The written apology format, therefore, was observed to be varied and included a wide range of victims and relational issues. Just as Radzik and Bennett have previously claimed that successful apologies can help to diminish possible threats to established relationships,33
Schluter has further argued that crime should be primarily regarded within a ‘relational justice’ dynamic. As part of this relational justice concept,
even in those cases where the offender does not personally know the victim, relationship(s) can be said to exist by virtue of their being citizens together,
32 No victims directly participated within those 47 panels observed across both programmes.
33 Linda Radzik, Making Amends. Atonement in Morality, Law and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009) 95. See also Christopher Bennett, The Apology Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 112.
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bound together by rules governing social behaviour. Crime is only secondarily to be regarded as an offence against the state and its laws’.34
Within panel observations, this ‘relational’ factor could be seen as representing a common theme during the management of referred cases. Some of the crimes managed within observed panels involved disagreements between community members known to each other previously and even, on occasion, good friends.35 Further, it was clear that
many victims could be affected indirectly because of the offending behaviour, such as family members of both offender and victim. The approach of widening the scope of the offending behaviour has resonated with Shapland and others, who have argued that, for an apology to be successfully achieved in a restorative justice context within a wider, formal criminal justice system and amongst adult offenders charged with serious offences, it has to be a ‘more complex and more evidenced entity—addressed to several audiences and backed up with the symbolic reparation of acting to change one’s life’.36
Written letters of apology were indeed ‘addressed to several audiences’ when relevant due to the nature of the crime referred. Further, these written apologies were also ‘backed up’ and reinforced by various reparative symbolic acts. For example, as well as the more routine financial and community service reparation terms agreed within panel discussions, all participating offenders had to also sign a ‘good behaviour agreement’ in which they would promise not to commit further crimes in the future. This ‘agreement’ was purely symbolic in that no additional legal penalty would have ensued from its signing if further crimes had been committed. It was seen as a gesture of good faith by the participant that they would stay clear of further criminal behaviour and reinforced
34 Michael Schluter, ‘What is Relational Justice?’ in Gerry Johnstone (ed.), A Restorative Justice Reader
(Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2003) 309. This relational justice concept is explored further within the ‘meso-community of care, concern and accountability’ theory introduced within Chapter 4 of this thesis. See also Andrew Ashworth, ‘Responsibilities, Rights and Restorative Justice’ (2002) 42 British Journal of
Criminology 578, 585 who has questioned the legitimacy of such victim/ offender relationships within the
restorative justice concept due to concerns over the proportionality of sentencing.
35 For example, one case involved an offence of fraud between two members of the community who had
known each other for many years. The offender had completed numerous jobs previously in the house of the victim. On this occasion, he falsely claimed for materials he did not use, and was found out and reported by the victim herself.
36 Joanna Shapland, Anne Atkinson, Helen Atkinson, Emily Colledge, James Dignan, Marie Howes, Jennifer
Johnstone, Gwen Robinson and Angela Sorsby, ‘Situating Restorative Justice within Criminal Justice’ (2006) 10 Theoretical Criminology, 505, 515.
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the good work carried out within the formal contract as a whole. Contract agreements were further reinforced by another written piece of work, what both programmes termed a ‘journal’, which set out other aspects of the criminal behaviour from the offender’s perspective. This journal would outline issues such as future positive hopes, aims and ambitions as well as various methods by which further recidivist behaviour could be avoided. These written exercises within agreement terms were illustrations of the need to help participants to think clearly about the direction their lives were heading in, while also recognising the dangers of crime and the possible advantages of a non- recidivist career path for both the participating offender, their family and friends.
It can be said, therefore, that there were a number of positive elements within the reparation panel format of written rather than verbal apologies, and within the related written pieces as part of the overall contract agreement. However, the written format of apology delivery also leaves the reparation panel process falling somewhat short of the theoretical idealism of the ‘fully restorative’ face-to-face, verbal apology between participating victim and offender. While Irish reparation panels continue to only manage adult offenders, it has been argued that juvenile offenders are far more likely to apologise to victims in face-to-face meetings than if they do not have face-to-face restorative justice, regardless of the stage of the criminal justice process at which that meeting has occurred.37 In this regard, Tavuchis has contrasted an ‘apology’ with that of
an ‘account’. Thus, an apology can be portrayed as a ‘speech act that fully acknowledges responsibility for wrongdoing…a genuine display of regret and sorrow’, whereas an account can be seen as an ‘excuse, defence, justification or explanation’ for a criminal act.38 For Tavuchis, an ‘apology’ is said to represent
37 Heather Strang, Laurence Sherman and Dorothy Newbury Birch, Restorative Justice: (UK: Youth Justice
Board: 2008) 32. See also, L. Sherman, H. Strang, C. Angel, D. Woods, G. Barnes, S. Bennett and N. Inkpen, ‘Effects of face-to-face restorative justice on victims of crime in four randomized controlled trials’ (2005) 1 Journal of Experimental Criminology 367. Further, see Carrie J. Petrucci (2002) ‘Apology in the Criminal Justice Setting: Evidence for Including Apology as an Additional Component in the Legal System’ 20
Behavioural Sciences and the Law 337, 343.
38 Nicholas Tavuchis, ‘Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation. (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1991) cited in Hennessey Hayes, ‘Apologies and Accounts in Youth Justice Conferencing: Reinterpreting Research Outcomes’ (2006) 9 Contemporary Justice Review 369, 375.
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‘a special kind of enacted story whose remedial potential, unlike that of an account, stems from the acceptance by the aggrieved party of an admission of iniquity and defencelessness. It is thus about a fall from social grace related to someone … who has the power to restore the offender to that state…. Needless to say, explanations, excuses, are also stories whose truth value or sincerity may be questioned, accepted, or denied. But they differ from apologies precisely because the narrator invokes something (or someone) to deny or to mitigate responsibility for an offence that undermines that which unites and binds… In practice, it makes a difference to us in our roles as suppliants and recipients if we interpret a speech as an apology or an account’.39
The fact that most reparation panel apologies are in written form and that many victims are not present during the offer of apology is therefore troubling from the perspective of ‘ideal’ apology theorists, although alternatively the absence of victims does limit the potential for such apologies to be rejected. Aligned with these concerns is the further realisation that many victims do not even receive the written apologies that are produced on their behalf due to the fact that they have chosen not to become involved in the reparation process generally. These factors might arguably strengthen the concerns of restorative theorists that the written apology within reparation agreements has resembled a mere instrumental, managerial inspired legal requirement rather than the ideal, communitarian rich, ‘meaningful interaction’ between victims, offenders and community members as recommended by Tavuchis and others.40 Being able to hear at
first hand the apology from the participant, being able to interpret the act while looking at the participant’s demeanour and facial expressions, could increase the opportunities for victims to believe that such remorse is truly sincere. It might increase the
39 Ibid.
40 As noted earlier, Able argues that an apology can represent a ‘ceremonial exchange of respect’. See
Richard Abel, Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech. (Chicago, Ilanois: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 265.
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opportunities for a successful ‘apology’ in Tavuchis’ terms, rather than a written, somewhat impersonal ‘account’.41
In counter argument to the benefits of such a first hand, interactional meeting between both victim and offender, there is the possibility that such a personal exchange might increase the potential for a victim to recognise a lack of sincerity, thus increasing their level of trauma.42 A failure to apologise by offenders, along with victims’ doubts over
the legitimacy and genuineness of those apologies offered, can serve to increase this trauma and increase the potential for secondary victimisation. Victims can feel that their case has not been taken seriously and that their harm has not been sufficiently acknowledged despite their willingness to directly engage in the process. This can then have repercussions for future practices which depend on direct victim participation and support. Daly has recognised how there may be an element of pressure placed on participating victims to accept an apology, especially in a face-to face mediation encounter. A victim may feel obligated to accept, regardless of whether the apology is believed to be truly genuine in nature.43 Similar concerns have been highlighted over
the use of direct apologies within offences involving domestic violence. For Cossins, an apology within this context can serve to cover up the true objective of the participating offender, a strategic attempt at currying favour with an abused partner after a domestic
41It should be considered at this point that an idealized apology, delivered face-to-face and verbally for
example, appears to place a primacy on particular forms of communication methods. These methods are for the most part assumed to be neutral but, in reality, are not neutral at all. For example, being able to “hear and interpret while looking’ assumes a form of functional neutrality which simply does not exist across the human race. It might be argued that the restorative literature surrounding this aspect of reparative practice has perhaps not caught up with a number of the standards within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD).
42 As part of the research carried out within the South Adelaide Juvenile Justice conferencing project
(SAJJ), Daly found that only 27% of victims believed the sincerity of offenders’ apologies, the majority of which were carried out face-to -face. A further 50% of victims did not believe the apology had helped to repair the harm caused by the offence. See Kathleen Daly, ‘Mind the Gap: Restorative Justice in Theory and Practice’ in Andrew von Hirsch, Julian V. Roberts, Anthony E. Bottoms, Kent Roach and Mara Schiff (eds.), Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice: Competing or Reconcilable Paradigms? (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2003) 225.
43 Kathleen Daly ‘Restorative Justice and Sexual Assault: An Archival Study of Court and Conference Cases’,
(2006) 46 British Journal of Criminology 334, 349. Daly’s research was one of several studies in a programme of research on Restorative Justice in cases of gendered violence. The study compared the court and conference handling of youth sexual offence cases and whether the court or the restorative conference process was the preferable legal intervention from a victim’s perspective.
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violence incident,44 while Stubbs has also reiterated the danger of apologies being used
in ‘gendered ways’, offered up by abusers as leverage to return to their abused partners.45 Indeed, in relation to such concerns, Sherman, Woods, Angel and others
found that female victims were more likely than male counterparts to view apologies as more sincere in nature.46
Of course, restorative models such as group conferencing, victim offender mediation and circle sentencing programmes are able to offer, in principle at least, more opportunities for a personal and direct apology exchange to take place. Within the New Zealand context, Moore’s observations of a family group conferencing juvenile model found that verbal apologies were given by the individual offender to both the direct victim and the victim’s supporters, as well as by the offender’s supporters to the direct victim and their supporters, and that the overwhelming majority of participating offenders were genuinely regretful and remorseful. Furthermore, most victims and their supporters were seen to reciprocate the apologies with genuine forgiveness, although the question might be asked of Moore’s research as to how this somewhat abstract concept of forgiveness can be measured generally.47 Thus, within this conferencing
model, the apologies utilised resulted in genuine remorse coupled with elements of forgiveness. This was despite the concerns mooted by Tavuchis of moving away from the ‘interpersonal apology’ between direct victim and offender and including outside influences such as third parties and other collective groupings.48 Within another
44 Annie Cossins, ‘Restorative Justice and Child Sex Offences: The Theory and the Practice’ (2008) 48 British
Journal of Criminology 359, 368.
45 Julie Stubbs, ‘Beyond Apology? Domestic Violence and Critical Questions for Restorative Justice’ (2007)
7 Criminology and Criminal Justice 169, 179.
46 Laurence Sherman, Heather Strang, Caroline Angel, Daniel Woods, Geoffrey C. Barnes, Sarah Bennett
and Nova Inkpen, ‘Effects of Face-to-Face Restorative Justice on Victims of Crime in Four Randomized Controlled Trials’ (2005) 1 Journal of Experimental Criminology 367, 388. See also Carrie J. Petrucci (2002) ‘Apology in the Criminal Justice Setting: Evidence for Including Apology as an Additional Component in the Legal System’, 20 Behavioural Sciences and the Law, 337, 356 wherein she argues that victims rarely do not accept apologies even if they prove to be unconvincing.
47 David B. Moore, ‘Shame, Forgiveness and Juvenile Justice’ (1993) 12 Criminal Justice Ethics, 3, 12. 48 Ibid. The involvement of third parties, as Tavuchis argues, introduces concerns over neutrality and also
serves to ‘shift attention from the original trespass to the moral integrity of the interlocutors, in most cases that of the offender’. Nicholas Tavuchis, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), quoted in David B. Moore, ‘Shame, Forgiveness and Juvenile Justice’ (1993) 12 Criminal Justice Ethics, 3, 12.
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conferencing example, as part of an evaluation of predominantly adult schemes in England managing serious offences such as burglary and serious assault, both participating offenders and victims recognised a need for something other than the symbolic reparation that apologies can offer.49 Research illustrated that a number of
participating offenders tended to believe that a simple phrase would not be enough to repair the harm caused and thus offered to apologise to the whole conference group not just the direct victim, as well as offering reparation and promises of future good behaviour.50
It is a matter of some debate therefore whether a written apology, without a reply from the victim as has been a common occurrence within observed Irish panel practice, serves to negate a respectful apology exchange whereas a face-to-face encounter in which an apology is offered and accepted, or at the very least received, might help to reinforce this respect principle further. For example, one example of victim feedback to the RJC model illustrated the potential of a direct restorative apology exchange. Within this case, managing a criminal damage offence, the person affected by the crime said,
‘thank you so much for the visit to [the property damaged by the offence where restorative conference was held]. The two superb bunches of flowers brought by [the person who caused the damage] and accompanied by his kind and thoughtful words, his courteous manner and interest…..impressed [us both] especially. We both feel he is the sort of young man that could do so well in life and hope that this incident be put behind him and every opportunity be given for him to succeed in life. Just to affirm that we do fully accept his apologies and the very good manner in which he made them. Thank you particularly for all your efforts in restoring relationships’.51
49 Joanna Shapland, Anne Atkinson, Helen Atkinson, Emily Colledge, James Dignan, Marie Howes, Jennifer
Johnstone, Gwen Robinson and Angela Sorsby, ‘Situating Restorative Justice Within Criminal Justice’ (2006), 10 Theoretical Criminology 505, 514.
50 Ibid.
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In this regard, while a face to face encounter might arguably increase the opportunities for genuine remorse to be illustrated and accepted within an apology exchange, it generally remains difficult to measure the depth and genuineness of such emotions. Indeed, there is some disagreement as to whether or not it is important if any apology, written or verbal, contains genuine remorse or is simply seen as a means of exercising a ‘strategic ploy’ in order to ‘buy off’ panellists’ demands.52 The notion of genuine
repentance, and its importance within the reparative apology framework, is outlined within the next section.