Restorative justice – Victims need more than power

The Restorative Justice Network defines restorative justice as “an approach to understanding and responding to crime. In terms of understanding crime, restorative justice theory emphasizes crime as harm to people, relationships, and communities. In terms of responding to crime, restorative justice practice focuses on repairing the harm inflicted by crime on people, relationships, and communities, and on giving those directly affected by the crime the opportunity to determine what that repair will look like.” Critics of restorative justice claim, among other things, that it takes too long, requires an alleged victim to talk with an alleged perpetrator, and may not help control behavior. Many of these objections presume that what victims need is power. What I like about this study is its argument against that presumption.

Fischer, Twardawski, Strelan, & Gollwitzer (2022) published “Victims Need More Than Power: Empowerment and moral change independently predict victims’ satisfaction and willingness to reconcile” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Here’s their abstract:

Punishing offenders for their misdeeds can restore a sense of justice achieved (i.e., justice-related satisfaction) among victims and increase their willingness to reconcile, especially if offenders signal that they understand why punishment has been inflicted on them. In this article, we theoretically disentangle and empirically test two explanations for this effect. One possible interpretation for this effect is that offender feedback empowers the victim and that empowerment is the crucial prerequisite for reconciliation. An alternative interpretation is that offender feedback benefits the victim because it suggests that the punishment had an educational effect and initiated a positive “moral change” in the offender. Six studies—four scenario and two autobiographic recall studies (combined N = 2,134)—suggest that the positive effects of offender feedback on victims’ justice-related satisfaction and willingness to reconcile cannot be reduced to empowerment. Empowerment and moral change rather constitute two independent mechanisms explaining when and why punishment facilitates the posttransgression process. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings (e.g., for restorative justice procedures).

I’ve mentioned before that I follow research on moral judgment. What I like about this work is that it confronts one of the premises of punitive measures – that power assertion will solve the problem. While Fischer et al. don’t deny the value of empowerment, the finding that moral change is an independent mechanism is helpful. While many practitioners work with clients who have been victims and have not experienced justice of any kind, it may be helpful to process both the issue of power and that of moral change in facilitating recovery.