2018-04-23 RRG Notes

From the Facebook event: "This week we'll be doing things a bit differently. Florence will be giving a talk on recognizing escalated behavior in social spaces and have provided these articles to act as accompanying content to their talk"

On Punitive Restoration

Within the criminal justice system, there's a tension between reducing reoffense rates and instilling greater public confidence
Improvements to one may come at the expense of the other
- Citizens wildly overestimate crime rates
- Blame lenient sentences
- However, increasing severity of punishments can make reducing crime more difficult
- Example: California's 3-strikes law
  - Had a negligible deterrent effect
  - Created an explosion in the prison population
Our current model isn't working
- Current sentencing practices only focus on a handful of people
- Over 95% of cases end in a plea bargain - never even make it to sentencing
- This is unfair to victims, witnesses, the offender, and the public
  - Victims and witnesses don't have the ability to publicly affirm their stories
  - The court loses the ability to use more effective sentences - the judge can only approve or veto the punishment put forth in the plea deal
  - The public loses out because the court cannot address contributing factors to the crime, making reoffense more likely
- Greater use of restorative justice can lead to a model of criminal justice that avoids the problems outlined above
Restorative Justice: A First Step
- T.F. Marshall: restorative justice is a 'process whereby all parites with a stake in a particular offense come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future'
- Two particular forms
  - Victim-offender mediation
  - Restorative conferencing
- Goal is to "restore" the offender back to a lawful citizen
- Meetings are held by a trained facilitator and are only possible when the offender admits guilt
- Provide an opportunity for constructive dialog
- Participation must be voluntary
  - So, that's my first objection: it's easy to have voluntary participation in a pilot program, but when a program is rolled out to a larger population, voluntary participation often becomes "voluntary" participation - that is, non-participation results in the revocation of particular privileges or in social opprobium
  - In this case, because of power relations, I would say that one of the primary risks is that the justice system exchanges leniency for an admission of guilt and participation in victim-offender mediation
  - This would hurt both victims and offenders - victims could be re-victimized by disinigenuous apologies and admissions of guilt, whereas offenders who truly believed they did nothing wrong (and who might be correct in that belief) are further penalized by a justice system that is already well predisposed to assume that all who come into contact with it are guilty
- Meeting structure
  - Facilitator clarifies the parameters and purposes of the meeting
    - Facilitator role is open to anyone who can achieve accreditation, much like magistrates
  - Victim then has an opportunity to speak, to address the offender and state how their crime impacted them
  - Others impacted by the crime (friends, families, etc) may also speak
  - Offender speaks last, and accounts for their crime – typically includes apology
  - Meeting ends with the participants confirming a restorative contract
  - Offender can reject this offer and endure traditional sentencing
- 2 central ideas drive restorative justice
  - Understanding fosters healing
  - Effectiveness -
    - Participants in restorative meetings confirm higher satisfaction in the process than alternatives
    - Reoffense rates under restorative justice programs are up to 25% lower than reoffense rates under conventional sentencing
- Restorative justice establishes the flexibility we need in sentencing to tailor outcomes to offenders
- Contract will often include elements not present in traditional sentencing, such as psychological treatment, drug rehab, anger management, etc
The need for a new model
- Restorative justice is currently being held back from wider application
- Restricted to minor offenses and not more serious crimes
- Limited range of outcomes
  - Cannot recommend prison or even probation
    - Proponents of restorative justice have even argued that prison is criminogenic - counterproductive to the goal of reducing crime
  - However, the lack of prison as an option hampers restorative justice's ability to be applied to more serious crimes
- It is possible to make prison compatible with restorative justice by recasting prison as a way to provide intensive interventions when other options are not feasible
- Moderate or high-intensity psychological treatment can bring cost-savings of between 1.8 and 5.7 times the cost of implementation
Punitive Restoration
- This hybrid model of restorative justice plus punitive prison time can be termed "punitive restoration"
- Expanding restorative justice to include punitive options should lead to a less punitive justice system overall
- Allowing punitive options could allow for more widespread use of restorative justice techniques while maintaining public confidence in the justice system

Anger And Trauma

Why is anger a common response to trauma
- Anger is a core part of the survival response in human beings
- Helps us cope with life's stresses by giving us the energy to keep pushing in the face of trouble
- Helps by allowing us to shift our focus towards the problem that has to be solved instead of ourselves
- However, this anger can create major problems in the personal lives of those who have experienced trauma
How can anger after a trauma become a problem?
- With PTSD, a person's response to extreme threat can become "stuck" and becomes their response to all stressors
- This automatic response can create problems in the workplace and in family life
- Three key aspects of post-traumatic anger
  - Arousal
    - Muscle tension
    - Feeling of being keyed up or on edge
    - Irritability
    - Can lead someone with PTSD to seek out situations that warrant that level of alertness
    - Can also lead to temptation to use alcohol or drugs to reduce the level of tension
  - Behavior
    - Only use aggressive responses in response to to threat
    - Impulsive actions
    - Self-blame
  - Thoughts and Beliefs
    - People with PTSD believe that threat is all around, even when this is not true
    - They may not be aware of how their thoughts and beliefs have been affected by trauma
How can someone get help with anger
- Arousal
  - Learn skills that reduce the overall level of arousal
  - Relaxation exercises
  - Self-hypnosis
  - Physical exercises
- Behavior
  - Look at usual behavior when confronted with stress
  - Expand range of possible responses
- Thoughts/beliefs
  - Increase awareness of thoughts
  - Come up with more positive thoughts to replace anger
  - Use role-play to practice recognizing thoughts that trigger anger and apply more positive thoughts instead

Review: Sarah Schulman's Conflict Is Not Abuse presents a shift in thinking about power relations, harm and social responsibility

The premise of the book is that we are conflating conflict with abuse
Conflict is "power struggle", and is a normal part of existence for individuals, groups and states
Abuse is "power over" - lopsided domination by one side over another
The terms come from the social work community and are used at the interpersonal level, but they can also be used to provide moral clarity when looking at group and state conflict
According to Schulman, we live in an era of "overreaction to conflict, and underreaction to abuse"
Distinguish overstatement of harm from the harm itself
Danger of mischaracterizing conflict as abuse is that it lowers the bar for what we term abuse, allowing abusers to claim the position of victim, even when they have a weapon and have the full force of the state backing them up