Against rehabilitation: for reparative justice

Abstract

The difficulties of re-imagining the possible relationships between crime and justice in class societies are so complex that it may seem easier (and cheaper) to attempt bettering the lot of the lawbreaking poor than to consider how best to respond to press mendacity, political malfeasance and corporate recklessness and greed. Confronted with economic and cultural inequalities which routinely deny ideals of justice, there is a temptation to bracket-off knowledge of criminal justice's malign underbellies, and instead talk ‘as if’ criminal justice's ideal play of governance is already realised in its rhetoric. In some senses, this ‘as if’ talk is aspirational, and it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise if more just conceptions of criminal justice are to be realised.

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Notes on contributors

Pat Carlen

Pat Carlen is Editor of the British Journal of Criminology