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"Restorative Justice" in Community Corrections?

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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
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