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Restorative Justice:What can we Infer from the Latest Research? Dr. Jim Hackler*
What do the latest evaluations of RJ tell us? What are the limitations of these evaluations? What should we expect from a scientific evaluation? Are there situations where RJ is not appropriate?
When we look at crime prevention, we do have strong evidence that crime can be reduced. We know that systematic support for disadvantaged mothers can reduce delinquency 15 years down the line. But most politicians can’t see that far in the future. But Restorative Justice is not designed to prevent crime, at least not directly.
We also know that some societies and social conditions produce more crime than others. But changing society so that it is less criminogenic is not RJs mandate. It focuses on a smaller, but important problem. It should be evaluated in terms of these modest, but significant goals.
Why support RJ?
Naturally, many of us would like to see a reduction in criminal behaviour, but there are at least two other reasons for supporting RJ.
1) First, it can offer alternatives to programs that do damage. We know that prisons do damage. Society sometimes does not have a good alternative to prison, but rarely do offenders return from prison better citizens than when they entered. James Bonta and other criminologists have compared offenders who went to prison with those who were involved in Restorative Justice. Those involved in RJ did as well or better than those who went to prison.
Of course, these results do not prove that RJ is effective. It could be that almost anything would be better than prison. Perhaps probation, or some other alternative, would have been even better than RJ. But what is clear that RJ is probably a better choice for many of those who are made worse with expensive and harmful prison experiences. Even conservative policy makers can see that saving money and doing less damage make sense.
2) Secondly, RJ also tends to satisfy victims more than processing offenders through the traditional criminal justice system. Admittedly, we are not sure why. It is possible that the placebo effect is operating more than the principles embodied in RJ. And there are other factors that might be operating. It is important to try to understand why and how things work, but we use tools that seem to work. Even if we don’t know why aspirin reduces pain, it is useful when we have a headache. Thus, using RJ for the benefit of victims makes sense.
RJ reduces crime
But my focus today is on evidence that RJ can actually reduce crime. We have no evaluation of an RJ project in Canada that meets minimum scientific standards, at least according to those who specialize in this area. However, at the Stockholm Symposium on Criminology this summer, there was a review of 14 projects in Australia, the U. S., and England that do meet these standards. For example, they use randomly assigned treatment and control groups. Without having a comparison group, preferably a randomly assigned control group, it is difficult to claim that a change took place because of the treatment.
We also have about 45 other evaluations internationally that come close to meeting these standards. I want to concentrate on the 14 evaluations in the English speaking world. Our societies are similar enough to make these evaluations appropriate for Canada. Tara Ney, who is part of our local RJ advocacy group, has shared information about the English studies included in these 14 but I want to emphasize aspects of this research that many people have overlooked.
Overall, 13 of the 14 projects demonstrated a decrease in crime among those who participated in RJ compared to their randomly assigned control groups. Of the 5 projects dealing with violent offenders, participants in all 5 showed a decrease in criminal behaviour compared to the control group. The decrease in crime was much more apparent among serious and violent offenders than among property offenders.
I don’t want to spend time on the details of the research but simply highlight two features that are not readily apparent.
First, none of the 14 projects were able to carry out the RJ program as they had originally planned. A critic could point to these projects and say that they were all flawed. True. And if the programs failed, perhaps this criticism would be valid. But they were successful. I would argue that this shows that RJ is a very robust factor and can succeed even when it is difficult to do everything one hoped to do. Most projects do not manage to carry out their tasks as well as they had planned. Most programs are flawed. If a program fails in the evaluation, one of the possibilities is that it failed because of flaws in execution. But when the projects succeed 13 out of 14 times, the key factor is robust---powerful enough to overcome minor flaws in delivering the program.
We know that exercise is good for us. Perhaps there is an ideal exercise regime for you, but you can’t always follow the idea plan. But almost all exercise seems to help. Exercise is a robust factor in maintaining health even when done imperfectly.
For these RJ projects, the very fact that all of them were flawed illustrates that RJ is very powerful or robust.
A second feature of these projects is that, taken individually, none of these evaluations reached statistical significance. In other words, these results could have occurred by chance in each project. But it happened 13 out of 14 times!! That is unlikely to happen by chance. If we look at each project individually, we might be cautious. But when the pattern repeats itself, then the best interpretation is that something really happened.
Before we just assume that RJ is absolutely wonderful, we should look at some potential pitfalls which research might identify in the future. In the 1960s many evaluations of delinquency prevention programs were done, and the results were very disappointing. One program in Los Angeles looked promising. Young people in the treatment group did better than those in the control groups.
However, one researcher divided the subjects into serious offenses, moderate offenses, and minor offenses. The serious offenders did not do any better than their control group. The moderate offenders did slightly better than the control groups. The minor offenders did much better than their controls.
Then the researcher looked carefully at the way the police were assessing the young offenders. If the delinquent had been in the program, the police officer might say, “But you were cured by the program. You are not supposed to be delinquent any more!” And the offender would say, “Yes, I’m really cured. This was a small slip up.” So the officer would not charge the offender.
In the control group, however, offenders who were caught were not given the benefit of the doubt. The success rate was determined by the behaviour of the police officers, not the behaviour of the offenders.
For the more serious crimes, this bias could not operate. The police had to lay charges when faced with a serious offender. This type of bias is common, and researchers now take it into account. Those attempts at evaluation that are not aware of the past research make this mistake constantly. One illustration is the attempt to evaluate the RJ program in Nanaimo. About 28 cases of juvenile shoplifting were recorded at the beginning of the program. After 3 years the rate dropped to zero. The fourth year there was one case of shoplifting. If you believe that shoplifting disappeared in Nanaimo I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I will sell you.
The fact that the police decreased their charging is useful information. And a change in strategy may have made very good sense, but it should not be used as evidence of success for RJ. The Nanaimo project should be commended for providing new evidence for a common phenomenon. We now know that police activity, not criminal behaviour is the main determinant of drug charges, shop lifting, minor assault and a large number of lesser crimes. This is useful information. And police forces are using it effectively to see how best to use their resources. When these data are analyzed by skilled statisticians and compared in certain ways, they can even tell us something about actual crime.
At the Stockholm Symposium we discussed the possibility of this police bias influencing the RJ studies. One researcher argued that the police do not know which juvenile is in the RJ program and which is in the control group. However, one Swedish researcher pointed out that their police officers DID know who was in the RJ group and who was in the control group. But there are techniques that researchers can use to shed light on this issue, and if this is of interest we can discuss it later.
In the RJ evaluations of violent crime the size of the difference between experimental and the control groups is large. It is unlikely that a police bias would explain this. The evaluations of property crime indicated only modest differences between the experimental and control groups. Such differences might be explained if there were a police bias. At the present time, we simply do not know.
A second potential pitfall has been identified by the extensive research from older diversion programs, called alternative measures in Canada. The Youth Criminal Justice Act uses “extra-judicial measures,” which can cover a lot of ground. An excellent review of the literature on diversion was commissioned by the Solicitor General of Canada in the 1980s. Two points are worth noting.
First, the police must be on side. At an earlier period the police were not always supportive. Those projects failed. Today, we know that police support is necessary and almost always they are cooperative and helpful.
Incidentally, many police departments were already using diversion quite effectively, and there is some evidence to suggest that their strategy was more successful than programs suggested by other well meaning folks.
Secondly, we learned that “expanding the net of social control” usually increased crime. The central idea of diversion was to screen people out of the formal justice system, avoiding the stigma and labeling which reduces success later in the legitimate world. When a police officer bawls out a juvenile shoplifter, lets him sit in the police station for a couple of hours, and then turns the juvenile over to annoyed and embarrassed parents, almost all of the deterrence has taken place. Further processing in the juvenile justice system adds very little.
However, North Americans are particularly eager to do something. They mean well and the police mean well. So instead of screening or diverting juveniles from the system, well meaning people create programs, often some sort of “talk therapy” which is supposed to help. In fact, the success rate of police officers yelling at kids is very high—around 95%. When almost any other program is added, the success rate drops, perhaps to 85 or 90%. This is still a high rate of success so that without a control group, program advocates deceive themselves into believing that they have helped when they have actually done damage.
Here in B. C. we have been very fortunate. Government employees, such as Alan Markwart, and those working the prosecutor’s offices, have successfully reduced the flow of juveniles going through the system. Unfortunately, they are faced with demands from well meaning citizens who want to help these kids by putting them in some sort of program. But creating such programs means expanding the net of social control. This tends to interfere with the links juveniles have with normal society, labels them as problems, and increases the likelihood of future crime.
Nanaimo provides a good illustration of this process. After the RJ project began, instead of screening out juveniles, it expanded the net, not just doubling it but tripling it. Again, documenting this net expansion was a good move in the Nanaimo project, but it should not be used as an indicator of success. Nanaimo, and many projects here in Victoria, has successfully instituted promising programs. Evidence of crime reduction should not be confused with success in establishing a program.
Naturally, many people think that doing something is better than doing nothing. And RJ has just got to be good. But let us ask ourselves if we are really doing RJ or applying that label to group therapy programs that have failed in the past. In addition, a central requirement of RJ is that there must be a meaningful victim. Walmart’s is not a meaningful victim to juveniles.
One Canadian study is revealing. Don Andrews and his colleagues were studying the impact of parole on released prisoners. For years research had suggested that parole may have been better than prison, but it didn’t add much to straight release without supervision. But the public does not want straight release. They want some control. So we tried increasing the intensity of parole supervision. That was disappointing. Then Don Andrews separated serious offenders from minor offenders. High intensity supervision helped serious offenders, but it made minor offenders worse. Lumped together the results showed nothing. Separated out we saw a positive impact on serious offenders and a negative impact on minor offenders. Today parole officers take heed of this finding. They do not pester the minor offenders as much.
But the larger theme seems to be that those who are alienated from society, such as serious offenders, or wife beaters in an RJ program, may benefit from interaction with those who represent normal society. By contrast, many are not alienated from society, but have made a mistake. They may be youthful hell-raisers trying to impress their buddies. They need to get on with their lives without the attention that can interfere with their integration into society.
Most juvenile shoplifters are not alienated; they are doing the daring things that young people often do. As Don Andrews and his colleagues have shown, interfering with those who are reasonably well integrated can do damage. The Andrews study illustrated a principle that will certainly be applied to RJ programs: using data already collected and breaking it down into smaller categories. Compare males and females, young and old, shoplifters and other property offenders, family violence and bar fights. Of course, this requires larger samples. This will come and we should be able to identify target populations where the use of RJ is more effective.
Concluding observations
Future research may provide more insights as to where RJ can have the most impact, but there are some clear policy implications from the present knowledge.
1) Government officials need to institutionalize RJ. It is one of the most effective tools at our command. It should not be left to the good will of volunteers. The volunteers are central to system, but they need systematic support.
2) The police and prosecutors should be guiding difficult, serious, and violent offenders into RJ. We have well established programs in Victoria and Nanaimo that are quite capable of meeting this challenge.
3) The courts should take a look at sentencing and consider the use of RJ as a way of reducing or possibly replacing a prison sentence.
In addition, there are other areas where RJ principles look promising. Hopefully, Etta Connor will describe her experience at a conference review restorative practices in the school. Some of us in criminology were quite unimpressed by the claims made by the “zero tolerance” policy adopted by the schools. Kicking kids out of school for smoking pot does help them very much.
At times one must ask if RJ principles fit. When a youth is smoking pot it may be difficult to identify a victim. But the groups of volunteers involved in RJ may also have the potential for a “circle of support.”
Remember, the place where RJ seems to be successful is interacting with people somewhat alienated from society. If RJ groups simply go through the rituals and then declare the problem solved, they may be abandoning a powerful potential: that of providing continuing support by creating a circle of support that may help an individual do better in society.
Going back to school programs, I believe Etta Connor will tell you that the teacher absentee rate dropped after restorative practices were adopted in the schools. That is promising. True, simply taking action may have improved teacher morale. It may not be the RJ components which are the most crucial. But it is consistent with the RJ being crucial.
Furthermore, drug use may have dropped. If this is based on police charges, as noted before, this could tell you what police are doing, not necessarily what the youth are doing. But if there is also a survey of the youth maybe you do have stronger evidence.
In other words, not all research is limited to the experimental design that was applied to the 14 projects I just reviewed. Other findings are also useful. Thus, we proceed with best practices based on what we know now. Of course, we should rigorously test those best practices and revise them when the evidence from more rigorous evaluations offers insights. Enthusiasm is essential, partial knowledge is helpful, but we need to be willing to alter course occasionally so that we build on knowledge rather than resist it when it doesn’t fit are preconceived notion. Thus, I prefer to talk about promising programs rather than referring to them as successful when they haven’t faced rigorous evaluations.
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* Dr. Jim Hackler is Professor Emeritus of the Sociology Department of the University of Victoria; <jhackler@uvic.ca> Presented at UVic 16/11/08.
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