U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs National Institute of Justice

June 2001 Papers From the Executive Sessions on Sentencing and Corrections No. 11 What Future for “Public Safety” About This and “Restorative Justice” in Series Community Corrections? It is by now a commonplace that the number of people under criminal justice supervision by Michael E. Smith in this country has reached a record high. As a result, the sentencing policies driving that number, and the field of corrections, where ublic safety” and “restorative trying to turn his agency from what he the consequences are felt, have acquired an unprecedented salience. It is a salience defined justice” are big ideas now making characterizes as the empty execution of ret- more by issues of magnitude, complexity, and claims on the future of community ributive, court-imposed sanctions, toward “P expense than by any consensus about future corrections. They are appealing as strategic partnership with informal community boards directions. objectives for probation and parole agencies (“reparative boards”) to restore victims, that are unable to generate fiscal and political offenders, and communities.1 Meanwhile, Are sentencing policies, as implemented through correctional programs and practices, achieving support for the modest objectives of “enforc- embracing public safety as the strategic their intended purposes? As expressed in the ing court orders,” “meeting client needs,” objective for corrections, Washington State movement to eliminate indeterminate senten- and “reducing recidivism.” When the two amended its “just deserts”-based corrections cing and limit judicial discretion, on the one ideas are examined more closely, however, law in 1999, effecting a strategic redeploy- hand, and to radically restructure our retribu- their futures seem uncertain. They have im- ment of probation and parole agents. They tive system of justice, on the other, the purpos- portant features in common, but they conflict are now responsible for enhancing and pre- es seem contradictory, rooted in conflicting in ways which, left unresolved, could sap their serving public safety generally, in the places values. The lack of consensus on where sen- strategic value; they face challenges to which where individual offenders under supervision tencing and corrections should be headed is they are unevenly suited; and each requires are found. Wisconsin has similarly rede- thus no surprise. daunting transformations of the criminal ployed its community corrections staff, in two Because sentencing and corrections policies justice system. counties, to explore the capacity of commu- have such major consequences—for the nity corrections to pursue a public safety allocation of government resources and, more Despite their uncertain futures, restorative strategy effectively. fundamentally and profoundly, for the quality justice and public safety are already reshap- of justice in this country and the safety of its ing community corrections around the coun- If public safety and restorative justice are citizens—the National Institute of Justice and the try. Minnesota’s Department of Corrections, to have a future in community corrections Corrections Program Office (CPO) of the Office for example, has had a full-time Restorative as strategic objectives for probation and of Justice Programs felt it opportune to explore Justice Planner on staff for 7 years. Vermont’s parole, an assessment of their relative CONTINUED ... Corrections Commissioner is methodically merits is in order.

This project was cofunded by NIJ and Research in Brief the Corrections Program Office. 2 Sentencing & Corrections

ABout This Series ■ ■ ■ guards, for example—are abundant in safe places. Where they are absent, there is no ...CONTINUED Public safety as strategic public safety. But they can be and are found in them in depth. Through a series of Executive objective dangerous places too, and it is by mobilizing Sessions on Sentencing and Corrections, begun n order for public safety to serve as a strate- them that probation and parole agents most in 1998 and continuing through the year 2000, effectively increase and preserve public safety.3 practitioners and scholars foremost in their Igic objective for community corrections, answers are needed to some basic questions: field, representing a broad cross-section of By and large, conventional community correc- What is public safety? Where is it found? What points of view, were brought together to find tions has not operated this way. It has offered out if there is a better way to think about the would probation and parole agencies have a modicum of incapacitation of known of- purposes, functions, and interdependence of to do for there to be more of it? In popular fenders, for set periods of time, and it has sentencing and corrections policies. discourse, public safety is equated with more aimed to improve their character and circum- arrests, more prisoners, longer sentences, We are fortunate in having secured the assistance stances so that they do not offend again. For and lower rates of recidivism. These are of Michael Tonry, Sonosky Professor of Law and probation and parole agents to contribute to Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law conventional output measures of the criminal public safety in the places where potential School, and Director, Institute of Criminology, justice system, but they are poor proxies for offenders may come together with potential University of Cambridge, as project director. public safety. victims, they need to look beyond convention- One product of the sessions is this series of Public safety defined al caseload management techniques. They papers, commissioned by NIJ and the CPO as need to find and invoke the authority of the the basis for the discussions. Drawing on the As an objective for community corrections, naturally occurring guardians on whom any research and experience of the session partici- public safety is best conceived as the condi- pants, the papers are intended to distill their tion of a place, at times when people in community depends for its safety. This means judgments about the strengths and weaknesses that place are justified in feeling free of broad engagement of probation and parole of current practices and about the most prom- threat to their persons and property.2 As a agents with offenders in the places where ising ideas for future developments. condition of place and time, public safety is they pose risks; with police officers in those places; with other members of the offenders’ The sessions were modeled on the executive threatened whenever a vulnerable person or sessions on policing held in the 1980s and unguarded property is in the same place as a communities; and with their families, neigh- 1990s under the sponsorship of NIJ and potential offender at a time when the place, bors, employers, friends, and (even) enemies. Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. the potential victim or property, and the po- ■ ■ ■ Those sessions played a role in conceptualizing tential offender are all without guardians— community policing and spreading it. Whether people who have a protective relationship Restorative justice in the current sessions and the papers based on to them. them will be instrumental in developing a new community corrections paradigm for sentencing and corrections, or The role of guardians ome probation and parole practitioners even whether they will generate broad-based This view of public safety directly challenges who are enthusiastic about restorative support for a particular model or strategy for S change, remains to be seen. It is our hope that offender-focused probation and parole case justice embrace the idea because they see in it in the current environment of openness to new management. It emphasizes instead the need a better way to deliver what has been required ideas, the session papers will provoke com- for unofficial, naturally occurring guardians of them all along; others embrace it as a new ment, promote further discussion and, taken of people and places. Guardians are people justice paradigm, capable of displacing the together, will constitute a basic resource docu- who have a protective relationship to vulnera- retributive justice paradigm for which they ment on sentencing and corrections policy ble targets, people who have an intimate or doubt community corrections is well suited. issues that will prove useful to State and local supervisory relationship to potential offenders policymakers. (whether the offenders are under correctional In practice, the idea takes many forms: from supervision or not), and people who are family group conferencing to Native American National Institute of Justice responsible for places where the two may sentencing circles, from victim-offender medi- U.S. Department of Justice come together. Guardians—who may be ation to “reintegrative shaming,” from mone- Corrections Program Office parents, wives, children, friends, neighbors, tary restitution and community service orders U.S. Department of Justice employers, local shopkeepers, and security to the various victims’ rights now woven into Sentencing & Corrections 3

conventional criminal justice processes. At its Political interdependence about the great variety of public safety core restorative justice rejects the criminal To be effective in pursuing either the restor- problems, in hundreds of neighbor- law’s focus on culpability and retribution and ative justice idea or the public safety idea, hoods, and … deploy its resources casts punitive responses to criminal conduct community corrections agencies will have to to counter them…. [I]ncremental as aggravators of the harm already done. In enlarge their operational capacity. That re- investments in existing strategies and this new paradigm the purpose of justice is to quires not just redeploying personnel and tinkering with current arrangement restore the victim and the victim’s intimates resources, but also establishing collaborative of institutional responsibility will (who suffer the harm), the community relationships with the many others whose not suffice. Radical restructuring is (whose fabric is torn by the crime), and the participation is required for either idea to be required—restructuring of our con- offender (who will remain part of that com- realized. In addition, neither idea can be fully ception of the public safety problem, munity, or will reenter it before long, and realized without a substantial overhaul of of the legal instruments aimed at it, who, if unrestored, represents a continuing sentencing and corrections law. None of [and] of the strategies and penal threat to it). these transformations is imminent. If the measures employed against it.6 demands for collab- To be effective in pursuing either the oration and for Combination rather than competition is pru- restorative justice idea or the public wrenching transfor- dent for the proponents of both restorative safety idea, community corrections mations are made in justice and public safety, and combination is agencies will have to enlarge their competition with each possible. The collaborations and transforma- operational capacity. other, the prospects tions separately required by these reform for success are dim. agendas have more in common than most The key restorative practices are respectful Success would be more likely if both ideas of their proponents assume. listening to the victim’s story of the harm attract broad, overlapping constituencies and done, voluntary acceptance of responsibility if, in combination, they stimulate greater Conceptual overlap by the offender (also heard respectfully, lest demand for the required transformations Both public safety and restorative justice stigmatization and self-loathing block the than either stimulates by itself. incorporate each other’s essential features. offender’s return to full membership in the The triangular “web of interdependency” community); and voluntary undertaking by In his recent, exhaustive review of programs (victims, offender, community) on which the offender to make amends for the harms incorporating restorative justice processes, restorative processes rely has much in com- resulting from his crime. For the most part, John Braithwaite projects no easy victory for mon with the networks of naturally occurring restorative justice is understood by communi- this new model over the retributive and reha- guardians on which public safety depends. ty corrections practitioners not as an out- bilitative justice models that give shape and come, but as a process. As such, its features substance to sentencing and corrections Kay Pranis, since 1994 the full-time Restor- are thought to be instrumentally important today. His caution arises in part from recog- ative Justice Planner of the Minnesota but its outcome is necessarily indeterminate nition that “[i]f we take restorative justice Department of Corrections, has guided the until the process has run its course.4 seriously, it … means transformed founda- adoption of restorative justice processes in tions of criminal jurisprudence and of our diverse neighborhoods around her State. She ■ ■ ■ notions of freedom, democracy, and commu- has arrived at the view, shared by many others 5 working inside correctional agencies, that Complementary ideas nity.” Similarly, for a community corrections agency to take public safety seriously, for it to creating safe communities requires active he purchase of these two ideas on the redeploy personnel and resources according- citizen involvement: future of community corrections is likely ly, and for it to be accountable for public T It calls for a reengagement of all citi- to be stronger to the extent they (and the safety in the places where offenders are zens in the process of determining energy of their proponents) can somehow be found— shared norms, holding one another merged. They have enough in common to accountable to those norms and deter- make this more plausible than might at first [the agency] would have to develop mining how best to resolve breaches appear. capacities to do more than warehouse and case-work known offenders. It of the norms in a way which does not 7 would have to develop knowledge increase risk in the community. 4 Sentencing & Corrections

The conditions necessary for public safety This closely resembles the public safety Incompatible purposes can be similarly described: a set of generally argument for redeploying community cor- Those eager to incorporate restorative jus- agreed-upon rules of behavior, a shared rections agents to the places where public tice principles into community corrections appreciation that rule-breaking will be pun- safety is most in disrepair. There, they can are not inclined to view public safety as ished, and a further appreciation that playing combine with naturally occurring guardians a worthy purpose. Some are reluctant to by the rules will be rewarded. Viewed this of the offenders under supervision, of the accept it as a purpose because they do not way, creating and maintaining public safety people who are or might become vulnerable believe its achievement lies within the capac- requires teaching the lessons of responsibility to them, and of the locations where they ity of the agencies supervising offenders in and accountability and reinforcing them in might come together. Seen this way, both communities. Others are reluctant because raising children, supervising adolescents, and “restorative justice” and “public safety” are they doubt that public safety will ever be producing law-abiding young adults. These ideas that seek out—and seek to create— understood, by those who hold them to are tasks for parents, neighbors, schools, circumstances in which specific and general account, as something other than more churches, athletic teams, community service deterrent effects are realized through the arrests, revocations, and prison terms.10 groups, the local labor market, and—on proper functioning of restored community. what needs to be relatively rare occasions— Notably, both ideas deemphasize the role of There is a perhaps more fundamental conflict a local police, probation, or parole officer. the state in effecting deterrence. between these two strategic ideas, one that has the potential to sink any serious attempt It is John Braithwaite who has most clearly ■ ■ ■ to pursue both in the same agency. To pro- identified the conceptual overlap of restora- duce or preserve public safety, community tive justice processes and the protection of Conflicting ideas corrections would have to be proactive in public safety. “[R]estorative justice,” he f public safety and restorative justice are not its use of state authority and resources. Pro- writes, “can remove crime prevention from its Iwholly incompatible as strategic ideas for bation and parole agents would have to be marginal status in the criminal justice system community corrections, there remain distinc- dispersed to the places where public safety is [and] can deliver the motivation and wide- tions between them that could easily lead the in disrepair, where they can be active in su- spread community participation crime pre- pursuit of one to undermine the other. pervising offenders and engaged with natural- vention needs to work.”8 Taking the point a ly occurring guardians of those offenders and step further, he argues that deterrence and Incompatible strategies of the people and places vulnerable to them. incapacitation are more likely to be effective Community corrections has long been in the But by projecting the authority of the state strategies for reducing crime if they are business of “normalizing” offenders—trying into the community this way, by collecting the grounded in restorative justice principles: to render them harmless by securing their information needed to understand local pub- adherence to community norms. If public lic safety problems, and by making partners [P]unishing crooks is a less efficient safety were seriously pursued as the strategic of the naturally occurring guardians with deterrence strategy than opening up objective, community corrections would whom it would need to combine to be effec- discussion with a wide range of actors also be trying to normalize the places where tive, a corrections agency is likely to be with preventive capabilities, some of known offenders are found in the midst of viewed—perhaps accurately—as distorting whom might be motivated by a raised those who are vulnerable to them. And if the “fabric of community” on which restora- eyebrow to change their behavior in community corrections were fully to embrace tive justice processes and outcomes depend. ways that prevent reoffending. [The restorative justice principles, it would take strategy] is to keep expanding the upon itself the much larger task of normaliz- By contrast, restorative justice processes, like number of players involved in a ing (“restoring”) communities. It is difficult conventional justice processes, are largely restorative justice process until we if not impossible for a single agency to be reactive. They are invoked after a crime oc- find someone who surprises us by effective in pursuing all three strategic ideas, curs. To be sure, their usefulness as problem- being influenced through the dialogue any one of which would tend to consume its solving techniques orients them to the future to mobilize some unforeseen preven- entire operational capacity. more robustly than the conventional justice tive capability.9 processes of adjudication, sentencing, and correction. Yet they are tied to particular conflicts and crimes, rather than to the Sentencing & Corrections 5

patterns of conflict and crime that would to constrain victims from doing so, be- unpredictable, individualized objectives draw on the problem-solving capacity of a cause stigmatization of this kind (what victims reveal when they are asked. And community corrections agency committed to Braithwaite terms “disintegrative shaming”) while the deliberative, consensual process- public safety as its strategic objective. leaves victims more vulnerable and offend- es of restorative justice are well-suited to ers more motivated to offend. But devices discovery of a victim’s objectives, victims ■ ■ ■ intended to script victims’ participation are are often confident they already know Further challenges also destructive of restorative processes them. For victims such as these, restorative and, of course, offensive to victims. justice processes can seem unnecessary esolving the conflicts between public at best. ■ The victims’ movement has focused for safety and restorative justice is not the R years on a perceived imbalance of “rights.” sole challenge. Proponents of each of these Of course, many individual victims and lead- Defendants were advantaged by the pre- strategic ideas might be asked how a commu- ers in the victims’ movement do not sense this sumption of innocence, the right to proof nity corrections agency interested in incorpo- challenge to restorative justice, or view the beyond a reasonable doubt, the right not to rating either one could meet a half-dozen problems as minor ones in light of the poten- have to acknowledge responsibility—or other challenges. tial gains. As a result, restorative justice initia- testify at all—and, when proof is legally tives in community corrections agencies can insufficient, freedom from punishments Victims usually claim the endorsement and involve- they deserve in fact. Victims, on the other It cannot be assumed that crime victims in ment of some victims and victim advocates. hand were extended no rights at all in the general want any particular thing, or that any legal process. particular victim wants whatever it is that a But the greatest challenge victims pose to system of justice has to offer.11 Nevertheless, Over the past two decades, as the infra- restorative justice is indifference. Restorative for restorative justice to find victims a structure of a victims’ movement grew, so processes depend, case by case, on victims’ challenge is a bit of an embarrassment. did a new set of “victims’ rights”: right to active participation, in a role more emotional- “Restoring the victim” is a central objective allocution at sentencing, right to notifica- ly demanding than that of complaining witness and method of restorative justice, and propo- tion of plea offers, right to be heard at in a conventional criminal prosecution— nents of the restorative justice idea in com- parole release hearings and to be notified which is itself a role avoided by many, perhaps munity corrections often simply assume of them, and (in some places) right to be most victims. Their reasons for avoiding the victims will support their adoption of it. present at executions. To many in the role of prosecution witness are also many. However, important segments of the U.S. movement, these are crucial gains that Some of them (“It’s just not worth it to me,” victims’ movement are opposed to one, are threatened by some features of the or “I need to be at my job,” or “I have to take another, or all restorative justice initiatives. restorative justice process, such as respect- care of the kids,” or “I’m going to the football There are several reasons: ful listening to the offender’s story and game”) will render a victim equally unenthusi- consensual dispositions. These features astic about being restored through respectful ■ In the hands of community corrections seem affronts to a victim’s claim of the dialogue with the offender and his circle of agencies whose habits are offender fo- right to be seen as a victim, to insist on supporters. cused, restorative justice processes can the offender being branded a criminal, to cast victims as little more than props in a blame the offender, and not to be “victim- The idea that public safety should be the psychodrama focused on the offender, to ized all over again by the process.” strategic objective of community corrections restore him (and thereby render him less agencies faces a slightly different challenge ■ Many victims do want apology, if it is heart- likely to offend again). under this heading, but one just as serious felt and easy to get, but some want, even and complex. It is hard to engage naturally ■ A victim, supported by family and intimates more, to put the traumatic incident behind occurring guardians for a victim who will not while engaged in restorative conferencing, them; to retrieve stolen property being held acknowledge the need for such guardianship, and feeling genuinely free to speak directly for use at trial; to be assured that the of- or who insists that the sufficient response to to the offender, may press a blaming rather fender will receive treatment he is thought the crime is a substantial prison term for the than restorative shaming agenda. Restor- to need if he is not to victimize someone offender. ative justice principles can be understood else; or to realize any other of the countless 6 Sentencing & Corrections

Offenders a community corrections agency committed to the risks of a public safety regime in Similarly, offenders present challenges to both to “what works” principles: “What works” which penal authority and resources are strategic ideas, but for restorative justice, the focuses on the individual offender even more deployed as they are now, but in greater difficulty is isolated within the offender, who intensively than do conventional probation measure and without reason and without may not readily agree to participate in the and parole, while both public safety and a basis in fact. The result could quickly process by acknowledging responsibility and restorative justice are concerned with indi- become a harsh and wasteful regime in making amends. For public safety, the chal- vidual offenders only within the webs of which public safety is sought using all avail- lenge is to overcome the offender-centered interdependency (or networks of naturally able penal measures in every case, without habits of the criminal justice process and its occurring guardians) that ordinarily regard to the plausibility of any. correctional apparatus. The focus of commu- regulate individual behavior.12 nity corrections agents on the individual The restorative justice process also requires offender, and on the penal measures applied Facts factfinding—about what happened and why, to him, obscures their view of and capacity Reliable factfinding is needed at every stage of what harms resulted, and what paths there for analyzing the continuing threats to public criminal justice processing, if the purpose for are to restoration for each party having a safety—problems of which the offender which the process is invoked is to be realized stake in the crime. However, reliability of the under supervision may be but a part. in the individual case. But facts are difficult to facts used in the process may be less impor- agree upon, they change tant than their utility in bringing the various The focus of community corrections over time, and it is often stakeholders together. In restorative justice, agents on the individual offender, and difficult to determine the facts are relied on not so much to sup- on the penal measures applied to him, which facts are relevant port inferential reasoning about likely conse- obscures their view of and capacity to crucial decisions— quences of particular uses of penal authority for analyzing the continuing threats to public safety. decisions about what but to precipitate and test the strength of correctional regimen to individuals’ feelings and to move the process impose and decisions toward consensus. Greater factfinding rigor, “What works” made in the course of probation or parole and a legal style of inferential reasoning An idea that has captured the imagination and supervision. Effective pursuit of public safety from facts found, may be necessary for effec- enthusiasm of community corrections practi- by a community corrections agency requires tive pursuit of public safety, but they do not tioners of all ranks in recent years is that reliable factfinding and reasoning from those suit the restorative justice idea very well. their interventions in the lives of offenders facts, on matters about which most jurisdic- will yield powerful rehabilitative effects if they tions are extraordinarily casual in current law Operational capacity embody “what works” principles. These are and practice. Sentencing courts do not often Although many community corrections agen- principles drawn from meta-analyses of large require empirical support for a prosecution cies are exploring one or both of these strate- numbers of program evaluations. Ironically, claim that public safety requires this offender gic ideas in practice, none really has the commitment to this new recipe for efficacy to do 2 years, and that one 5. Nor is evidence operational capacity to pursue the ideas limits the prospects for making either public often offered in support of defense claims that effectively—yet. That is in part because their safety or restorative justice the central strate- a particular program will affect a particular staffs lack many of the necessary skills and gic idea for community corrections. The new offender in a way and to an extent necessary have been deployed for years in ways incom- principles of effective intervention require that for public safety to be preserved. Corrections patible with public safety purposes or re- offenders be matched to services on the basis agencies themselves are, at best, uneven in storative justice practices. No community of risk classification, criminogenic needs, their capacity for this sort of factfinding and corrections agency has sufficiently enlarged and individual characteristics found to be reasoning. its operational capacity, by collaboration and significant through the meta-analyses, and integration with the naturally occurring forces that the intervention be grounded in cognitive- Overhauling factfinding procedures to the of social control on which public safety and behavioral treatment. extent required is a major challenge for a restorative process depend, in communities community corrections agency committed to where the work must be done. Many are Both restorative justice and public safety are pursuing a public safety strategy. Failure to trying, and some are making good progress.13 likely to prove elusive strategic objectives for do so exposes the agency, and the rest of us, ■ ■ ■ Sentencing & Corrections 7

Rhetoric or reality? Notes Michael E. Smith is a professor at the University of estorative justice” and “public safety” 1. These and other applications of the restorative Wisconsin Law School. justice idea to community corrections are described “Rare valuable strategic ideas in a com- in Incorporating Restorative and Community munity corrections field in search of new Justice into American Sentencing and Corrections, This study was supported by cooperative agreement 97–MUMU–K006 between the National Institute of operational principles and animating themes. by Leena Kurki, Research in Brief—Sentencing & Corrections: Issues for the 21st Century, Washington, Justice and the University of Minnesota. But they can be and often are devalued by D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of their use as rhetorical cover for business as Justice/Corrections Program Office, September 1999, Findings and conclusions of the research reported usual. Offender accountability and victim NCJ 175723. here are those of the author and do not necessarily restoration look like promising strategic 2. This is the descriptive definition of public safety reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. adopted by the Reinventing Probation Council in Department of Justice. ingredients to corrections managers who Broken Windows Probation, American Probation think themselves without a market for offend- and Parole Association and the Manhattan Institute, The National Institute of Justice is a component er rehabilitation. Similarly, embracing “public New York, 2000, 12. For a more detailed discussion, of the Office of Justice Programs, which also see Reforming Sentencing and Corrections for Just includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the safety” seems smart in these risk-averse Punishment and Public Safety, by Michael E. Smith times, when the public’s experience of less and Walter J. Dickey, Research in Brief—Sentencing Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Juvenile crime-in-fact seems to leave fear of crime & Corrections: Issues for the 21st Century, Washing- Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the ton, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Office for Victims of Crime. in place. Institute of Justice/Corrections Program Office, September 1999, NCJ 175724. This and other NIJ publications can be found There is no doubt that powerful ideas get a bit at and downloaded from the NIJ Web site 3. See Smith, M. E. and Dickey, W.J., “What If tarnished by political exploitation, but their Corrections Were Serious About Public Safety?” (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij). substantive value is not affected. The malaise Corrections Management Quarterly 2 (3) (Summer NCJ 187773 in probation and parole agencies is real, and 1998): 12–30; and Eck, J.E. and Weisburd, D., “Crime Places In Crime Theory,” in Crime and it is shared by the public. It will not be dissi- Place, ed. Eck and. Weisburd, Monsey, NY: Criminal 11. For the great variety in what victims want after a Justice Press, 1995. pated by slapping feel-good labels on impov- crime, see Davis, R.S., et al., The Role of the erished correctional practices, but it will 4. These concepts are elaborated in Kurki (note 1 Complaining Witness in an Urban Criminal Court, motivate a continuing search for something above). Also instructive is “Restorative Justice: New York: Vera Institute and Victim Services Agency, Assessing Optimistic and Pessimistic Accounts,” by 1980. more plausible than probation and parole as John Braithwaite, in Crime and Justice, A Review 12. “What works” principles and restorative justice we know them. of Research vol. 25, ed. Michael Tonry, Chicago: principles are drawn from competing justice para- University of Chicago Press, 1999. On the difficulty digms. The resulting tensions between them are of defining restorative justice, Braithwaite observes, The need will remain for strategic redirection detailed in Levrant, S. et al., “Reconsidering Restor- “[S]takeholder deliberation determines what ative Justice: The Corruption of Benevolence of community corrections—for redeploying restoration means” (p. 6). its legal authority and resources and enlarg- Revisited?” Crime and Delinquency 45 (1) (1999). 5. Braithwaite, “Restorative Justice”: 2. ing its operational capacity through broader 13. For illustrations, see Dickey and Smith, 6. Smith and Dickey, “What If Corrections Were Dangerous Opportunity: Five Futures for engagement with communities. My view is that Serious About Public Safety?”: 2, 26. Community Corrections. both “public safety” and “restorative justice” 7. “Restorative Justice, Social Justice, and the have merit as ideas around which the future Empowerment of Marginalized Populations,” in of community corrections might coalesce, Restorative Community Justice: Repairing Harm and that competing ideas do not. Experience and Transforming Communities, eds. G. Bazemore and M. Schiff, Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing Co., suggests that, under these conditions, the 2001. operational capacity of community correc- 8 Braithwaite, “Restorative Justice”: 55. tions will continue for some time to fall short of what the ambitious new ideas require, but 9. Ibid.: 59. that efforts to apply them in practice will 10. For a report and discussion of these tensions in the community corrections field, see Dickey, W.J., move the field to another, better, but still and Smith, M.E., Dangerous Opportunity: Five transitional performance level. Futures for Community Corrections, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1999. 8 Sentencing & Corrections

The Executive Sessions on Sentencing and Corrections Convened the following distinguished panel of leaders in the fields:

Neal Bryant Sally T. Hillsman Mark H. Moore Dora B. Schriro Senator Deputy Director Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Director Oregon State Senate National Institute of Justice Justice Policy and Management Department of Corrections U.S. Department of Justice John F. Kennedy School of State of Missouri Harold Clarke Government Director Martin Horn Harvard University Michael Smith Department of Correctional Services Secretary Professor of Law State of Nevada Office of Administration Norval Morris University of Wisconsin Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Julius Kreeger Professor of Law Cheryl Crawford and Criminology, Emeritus Morris Thigpen Acting Director, Office of Susan M. Hunter University of Chicago Director Development and Communications Chief, Prisons Division National Institute of Corrections National Institute of Justice National Institute of Corrections Joan Petersilia U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Department of Justice Professor of Criminology, Law and Society Michael Tonry Walter Dickey Leena Kurki School of Social Ecology Director Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law Senior Research Associate University of California, Irvine Institute of Criminology University of Wisconsin Council on Crime and Justice University of Cambridge Minneapolis Kay Pranis Sonosky Professor of Ronald Earle Restorative Justice Planner Law and Public Policy District Attorney John J. Larivee Department of Corrections University of Minnesota Austin, Texas Chief Executive Officer State of Minnesota Project Director Community Resources for Justice Executive Sessions on Sentencing Tony Fabelo Michael Quinlan and Corrections Director Joe Lehman Former Director Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council Secretary Federal Bureau of Prisons Jeremy Travis Department of Corrections U.S. Department of Justice Senior Fellow Richard S. Gebelein State of Washington The Urban Institute Superior Court Judge Chase Riveland Former Director Wilmington, Delaware Dennis Maloney Principal National Institute of Justice Director Riveland Associates U.S. Department of Justice John Gorczyk Deschutes County (Oregon) Commissioner Department of Community Justice Thomas W. Ross Reginald A. Wilkinson Department of Corrections Director Director State of Vermont Larry Meachum Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Department of Rehabilitation Director Former Chair and Correction Kathleen Hawk Sawyer Corrections Program Office North Carolinian Sentencing and State of Ohio Director Office of Justice Programs Policy Advisory Commission Federal Bureau of Prisons U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Department of Justice

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