Gerry Johnstone (University of hull)

 Exposition ◦ Overlap with advocacy  Scientific Evaluation  Critiques ◦ Internal ◦ External (common standpoint = traditional legal/retributive values)

 Reasons: ◦ Involvement ◦ Focus on matters of immediate policy or practical relevance

 The restorative justice complex ◦ Practices ◦ ideas embodied in practice ◦ representations  The restorative justice ethos ◦ A particular way of seeing the world ◦ A preferred way of acting in the world

 What is the political and cultural character of restorative justice?  How would society be affected by the spread of the restorative justice ethos?  Need to compare: ◦ Self-understanding ◦ A more detached understanding

 Restorative justice progressive, at odds with the cultural mainstream, has beneficial effects ◦ Fewer exposed to harmful interventions or neglect/more exposed to constructive interventions ◦ People become empowered ◦ Spills over into empowered communities  Decline of punitive mentalities and bureaucratic mindsets

 Look at rise of RJ on broader context  RJ in tune with key aspects of cultural mainstream  RJ both exemplifies and helps disseminate key aspects of the contemporary political and cultural imagination  These aspects of culture are complex and in many ways problematic

 Neo-Liberalism ◦ Encourages citizens and communities to become less state-reliant and assume responsibility for security and other problems  Therapy culture ◦ Tendency to interpret our encounters, experiences and relationships though the prism of emotions ◦ Events analysed via cultural scripts of ‘trauma’ and ‘healing’

 Progressive implications of RJ cannot be taken for granted (or read off from intentions)  Need to explore political and cultural contexts which underpin and shape the implications of restorative justice