Messy victims and sympathetic offenders: the role of moral judgments in police referrals to restorative justice

ABSTRACT

While restorative justice enjoys increasing popularity in a variety of national contexts, it is not yet a structural part of police work. Implementation is often piecemeal, with only a small minority of cases deemed suitable for a restorative approach. This paper draws on literature on the moral dimensions of street-level bureaucrats’ everyday work to analyse how police officers in the Netherlands decide to (not) refer victims and offenders to restorative interventions. In-depth interviews with police officers who are involved in these interventions show that what they present as pragmatic considerations also involve judgments of the deservingness of victims and offenders. Contrary to the literature on ‘ideal’ victims and offenders of restorative justice, police officers in this study are more likely to offer restorative interventions to ‘messy’ victims – who are seen as partly responsible for the crime due to their behaviour and/or relationship to the offender – and to offenders who are considered pitiable or sympathetic. These judgments partly map unto existing cultural norms and biases, and the resulting selective deployment of restorative interventions may therefore conserve and reproduce inequities in the criminal justice system.

KEYWORDS:

• Restorative justice
• police discretion
• street-level bureaucrats
• police culture
• distributive justice
• the Netherlands

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Teun Geurts and Gieneke Teeuwen and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Finally, I would like to thank all the respondents for sharing their experiences.

Ethics statement

The author confirms that the research adheres to the legal requirements for non-intervention studies in the Netherlands. Informed consent was obtained at the beginning of the interviews; these statements were audio recorded.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This paper uses victim-offender mediation as this is the term most commonly used by restorative justice organizations in the Netherlands as well as some European organizations (e.g. the European Forum for Restorative Justice). Victim-offender mediation as it is understood here is informed by the principles of restorative justice and differs both conceptually and practically from mediation in civil or commercial disputes.

2. This directive specifies victims’ rights to protection, to participation in criminal proceedings, and to information and support. With respect to restorative justice, the directive states victims’ right to information about available services and specifies that member states should facilitate the referral of cases to such services when appropriate. In addition, the directive outlines the safeguards that should be provided in the context of restorative justice to prevent secondary and repeat victimisation.

3. ZSM is an approach to minor criminal cases in which an expedited prosecutorial decision is taken in a multidisciplinary setting that includes a police officer, an employee of the probation service, and a representative of a victim-care organization. Cases can be referred to a judge but also settled out of court, including through restorative interventions.

4. Names are pseudonyms.

5. High impact crime is an umbrella term for relatively minor crimes that have a large impact on victims’ sense of safety. These include burglaries, robberies, and assault.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M. S. Hoekstra

Myrte Hoekstra is a researcher at the Research and Documentation Centre (WODC), part of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. Her research focuses on inequalities in access to justice and the impact of policy reforms on citizens’ experience of the justice system. She has conducted several research projects into the implementation of restorative justice in the Dutch police force and the prison system.