Victim-Offender Encounters in Restorative Justice Practices: Emotional Representations versus Genuine Affects
Boran Ali MercanRestorative justice is an alternative practice in justice whereby offenders and victims voluntarily encounter, empathise and finally reconcile with each other in the presence of family and relatives, and other mediators. However, studies of restorative justice reveal the problem of offenders’ sincerity and genuineness in terms of their remorse and guilt in such encounters. Based on a psychosocial criminological perspective, this paper offers a conceptual distinction between emotion and affect, and further argues that emotion refers to symbolic bodily–linguistic signifiers being adaptable and consciously manipulable according to social contexts, whilst affect indicates an energy or intensities experienced unconsciously and not being symbolised. Setting out various case studies and pieces of evidence, the paper suggests that under the pressure of negative affects such as anxiety and fear of a possible failure of restorative justice conferences, offenders tend to display positive symbolic-emotional representations in a way that would convince victims and other mediators of their guilt and shame. The latter usually leads to the expected–idealised result of the victim-offender encounter. A psychosocial criminological perspective should always be taken into consideration while restorative justice practices are claimed to be successful and implemented in a specific social and judicial setting.
Onarıcı Adalet Pratiklerinde Mağdur-Fail Karşılaşması: Duygusal Temsiller karşısında Hakiki Duygulanımlar
Boran Ali MercanOnarıcı adalet mağdur ve failin gönüllülük temelinde, yakınlarıyla birlikte ve arabulucular eşliğinde, karşı karşıya geldiği ve birbirleriyle empati kurarak uzlaştıkları alternatif bir adalet pratiğidir. Tartışmaların onarıcı adaletin hukuki ve sosyokültürel imkanlılık koşullarına odaklaştığı kriminoloji yazınında, sözü pek geçmese de taraflar arası uzlaşının aslî koşulu, failin utanç ve pişmanlık duymasını mümkün kılacak karşılıklı pozitif duygusal etkileşim ve aktarıma dayanmaktadır. Öte yandan onarıcı adalet araştırmaları, mağdur-fail karşılaşmalarında pişmanlık duygusu, özrün samimiliği ve sahihliği sorununu ortaya koymaktadır. Bu makale, psikososyal kriminolojik bir perspektifle duygu ve duygulanım arasında bir ayrıma gitmekte; duyguların sosyal bağlama göre bilinçle manipüle edilebilir sembolik bedensel–dilsel gösterenler olduğunu tartışırken, duygulanımların bilinçdışı deneyimlenen ve sembolikleştirilemeyen enerji ve yoğunluklar olduğunu ileri sürmektedir. Çeşitli vaka analizi ve bulgulardan hareketle makale, failin onarıcı adalet pratiğinin başarısızlığı neticesinde olası bir ceza tehdidi karşısında deneyimlediği endişe ve korku gibi negatif duygulanımlar nedeniyle, karşılaşmadan beklenilen idealize edilmiş sonucu sağlayacak ve mağduru ikna edebilecek pozitif sembolik-duygusal temsiller sergileyebilme durumunu tartışmaktadır. Bu nedenle, mağdur ve fail arasındaki etkileşim sürecinde duygusal kırılma anlarındaki duygulanımsal yoğunluklara dikkat edilmelidir. Belirli bir sosyal ve hukuki düzlemde onarıcı adalet uygulamalarının başarısı ve tesisi ileri sürülürken psikososyal kriminolojik perspektif göz önünde bulundurulmalıdır.
Restorative justice is an alternative practice of justice whereby offenders and victims voluntarily encounter, empathise and finally reconcile with each other in the presence of family and relatives, and other mediators. It has emerged as a substitute for the criminalising effects and humane-fiscal cost of the retributive justice system and initiated the active participation of community members in justice procedure. In this regard, community values and norms function as replacements for the written law of the state and criminal justice courts but with regard to more integrating and inclusionary means. The aim is, simply, to restore the broken rule of law by reintegrating perpetrators into the law-abiding community. The main condition for reconciliation between parties relies on a mutual positive emotional interaction and transference between parties, the aim of which is to make offenders reflect on their illicit behaviours and ultimately feel shame and remorse. Even though debates mostly focus on the judicial and socio-cultural viability of this alternative justice system, it is the possibility of a positive emotional interaction that plays a critical role in setting peace and reconciliation between victim and offenders. The idealised process is personified by the revealing of positive emotional expressions, mutual empathy and understanding between the parties in a conflict of interest. A psychosocial criminological approach to the evidence found in the literature on restorative justice has thus far shown that shame and remorse are the two key emotions anticipated for reconciliation in this setting. While not referenced explicitly, this emotional interaction process bears rather on a psychosocial character given that certain psychoanalytical processes are implicitly at work when victims and offenders are seeking to empathise with each other. Given the previous successful results of restorative justice conferences, emotional interaction between the parties has been observed to lead to the construction of mutual empathy and final closure, relying on identification and transference. In the course of the interaction, certain emotional turning points have been identified as taking place between the victim and the offenders, the latter of whom attempts to initiate a possible closure by symbolicemotional posture, facial expressions and gestures. These emotional turning points usually change the course of the conversation between the parties, resulting in the expression of a cordial apology by the offender and its acceptance by victim. However, studies on restorative justice reveal the problem of offenders’ sincerity and the genuineness of their remorse and guilt in such encounters. Some researchers argue that a genuine flow of shame and remorse, in an idealised form, is not displayed by offenders in contrast to the idealised expectations. To exemplify this, setting out the findings of the South Australia Juvenile Justice Research and Conferencing Project, Kathleen Daly draws attention to the fact that victims thought that only 30 per cent of offenders’ apologies were genuine, whereas offenders claimed that 60 per cent of apologies were truly sorry. This means that victims do not think offenders’ apologies are sincere and that offenders think that their apology does not truly reflect any genuine intent. Put it another way, the evidences suggest that there is a radical difference between offenders’ psychic-inner experiences and the presentation of themselves regarding the imperatives of restorative justice setting. This paper offers a conceptual distinction between emotion and affect as viewed from a psychoanalytically-inflected psychosocial criminological perspective. It further argues that emotion refers to symbolic bodily–linguistic signifiers being adaptable and consciously manipulable according to social contexts, whilst affect indicates an energy or intensities experienced unconsciously and not being symbolised. Setting out various case studies and pieces of evidence, the paper suggests that under the pressure of negative affects such as anxiety and fear of a possible failure of the restorative justice conference, offenders tend to display positive symbolic-emotional representations in a way that would convince victims and other mediators of their guilt and shame. The latter usually leads to the expected–idealised result of the victim-offender encounter. Thus, affective intensities in the emotional turning points need to be considered within the interaction process between victim and offender. A psychosocial criminological perspective should always be taken into consideration while restorative justice practices are claimed to be successful and implemented in a specific social and judicial setting.
