Unpopular opinions I hold: a lot of the arguments around ‘restorative justice’, which aim to centre the victim(s) of crimes and focus on the harms to networks of social relationships, owe more than they realise to very old cultures of private vendetta ...
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@RanTLaw absolutely. Yet there it is as a fundamental human need
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@liamvhogan Defo law is another example of the law trying to step in to stop feuds (or at least violence stemming from feuds).
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@RanTLaw a whole code of law that defines insults and aims to measure harm to one’s reputation. There you go
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Is the modern carceral state reformable? A lot of people say no. But what is Australia but a 236-year old experiment in prison reform
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@liamvhogan "We consider that imputation to be worth two glove slaps on the old scale. That converts to $100K."
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@RanTLaw just as tort law & descendants emerged from attempts to codify wrongs into fines, payable to the wronged party. Everyone agrees making amends in money is better than a duty to exact revenge. Mostly.
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@liamvhogan What I love is that the early Danelaw charts setting out compensation for missing limbs etc are almost exactly replicated by many no-fault compensation regimes. They thought they were reinventing the wheel in the 1970s and 1980s but they bloody well were not.
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@liamvhogan @RanTLaw I don't see anyone getting paid compensation as a victim of robodebt so I guess we'll have to go with revenge.
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@daedalus @RanTLaw yes that’s a good example of what I mean! It’s notable that as much as actual compensation what people affected by it want is accountability—for someone to experience consequences.
And the lack of that accountability is experienced as a shock and an insult, that can’t really be made good with compensation
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@liamvhogan @daedalus An example that might or might not support your argument: When I was shot and made a victim of crime compensation claim, there was no way the perp was going to have to pay. I ended up settling for a reasonably small sum because, after the acquittal and the state initially rejecting my claim because of the acquittal, I just wanted someone to acknowledge that shit had happened.
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@liamvhogan @daedalus I also see it in mediations where there is a psychological figure plaintiffs will not go below. It's usually obvious relatively early what it is.
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@RanTLaw @daedalus there’s an extraordinary guideline the NSW Ombudsman put out in the 2000s about apologies, aimed at officials and decision makers. How to give them, how to receive them, how they can be used in administration and law. Pointing out that a prompt and sincere one is often all aggrieved people want.
But this is what I mean: at base there’s a real human need for justice of _some_ kind, and if it can’t be got with an apology, or a fine, or with punishment by the State, there are older and more brutal means
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@liamvhogan @daedalus In mediation training, we are also encouraged to look to and emphasise non-monetary solutions to disputes, in the knowledge we have more flexibility in that forum than courts. However, most of the mediations I see are shortly before trial and all sides are firmly entrenched, only emerging with money changing hands.
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@liamvhogan I think most people who work in restorative justice have no idea how it’s actually supposed to work. I worked in the same department as John Braithwaite for a while, who did most of the theory behind what is now restorative justice, and if you could say one thing about Braithwaite is he did his homework and he knew the historical context.
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@liamvhogan Also fun fact that Braithwaite came to reintegrative shaming via corporate and white collar crime, and its use in juvenile justice and family group conferences came a long time after that.