Shifting criminal justice practices away from sligmalization and toward rcintegration is no small challenge. The innovation of community conferences in New ZealandThe spectre of failure haunts modern criminology and penology. Deep down many feel what some say openly-that 'nothing works': that despite decades of study and debate, we are no nearer deterrence than we ever were and/or that more 'humane' forms of treatment are mere masquerades concealing a descent into Kafaesque bureaucracy where offenders suffer a slow and silent suffocation of the soul. Worse still, we fear that even when something does work, it is seen to do so only in the eyes of certain professionals, while 'outside' the system ordinary citizens are left without a role or voice in the criminal justice process. This paper takes a different view. Rejecting the pessimism that pervades discussions about crime and punishment, it offers an optimistic view of at least one area-the punishment of juvenile offenders. It argues that it is possible to develop practices that 'work'-both in the sense of reducing recidivism and reintegrating offenders into a wider web of community ties and support and, at the same time, in giving victims a 'voice' in a fashion that is both satisfying and also socially productive. Further, it links a theory (reintegrative shaming) and a practice (the reintegration ceremony) which explain how to understand and how to implement this success.While there are elements that are quite distinctive about both the theory and practice of reintegrative shaming, there is also a great deal in common with the theory and practice of 'making amends' (Wright 1982); restorative justice (Cragg 1992;Galaway and Hudson 1990;Zehr 1990); reconciliation (Dignan 1992;Marshall 1985;Umbreit 1985); peacemaking (Pepinsky and Quinney 1991); redress (de Haan 1990) and feminist abolitionism (Meima 1990). We differ from abolitionists, however, in believing that it is right to shame certain kinds of conduct as criminal in certain contexts.The rest of the paper has two sections. The second section outlines some fieldwork * Division of Philosophy and Law, The Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University. We would like to thank John McDonald, Gabrielle Maxwell, David Moore, Jane Mugford, Terry O'Connell, and Clifford Shearing for the stimulation and critique they provided in developing the ideas in this paper. JOHN BRAITHWAITE AND STEPHEN MUGFORDwhich we have undertaken to examine such ceremonies, makes a relatively brief series of arguments which connect the theory of reintegrative shaming to the seminal paper by Garfinkel on degradation ceremonies and outlines how the latter must be transformed to cover reintegration ceremonies. The major point of this section is a specification of the conditions for successful reintegration ceremonies. The third and longer section follows the logic of such ceremonies, illustrating each point with material derived from the fieldwork and offering comments about policy and implementation.
Background: Given the high prevalence of mental disorders and the comparatively low rate of professional help-seeking, it is useful for members of the public to have some skills in how to assist people developing mental disorders. A Mental Health First Aid course has been developed to provide these skills. Two randomized controlled trials of this course have shown positive effects on participants' knowledge, attitudes and behavior. However, these trials have provided limited data on participants' subsequent experiences in providing first aid. To remedy this, a study was carried out gathering stories from participants in one of the trials, 19-21 months post-training.
This paper argues that in order to understand the broad tide of change in drug control in recent times, we need to link these changes to a general understanding of social change. The paper sketches out how modern society arose and how it is giving way to the postmodern. Two themes are then developed. The first concerns the way that the state shrinks in postmodernity and links this to drug control, mentioning the example of random drug testing in the workplace as a good example of the change. It then moves to looking at the related shift in social control regimes from the 'corporal' regime of the premodern through the 'carceral' regime of the modern to population and risk management in the postmodern. It argues that in society in general there is a tension between carceral discipline and the amoral management of risk and that this is exhibited in drug control as a struggle between individual treatment and law enforcement on the one hand and 'harm reduction' on the other. This is illustrated by reference to a persistent tension within the NCADA enterprise.
Recreational. non-dependent cocaine users (n=73) were contacted in three Australian cities during 1986-7 using snowball sampling. They completed questionnaires on a variety of topics, were then interviewed about drug use. Compared with the general population, respondents were disproportionately young, well educated, unmarried. metropolitan, and non religious. They were 'liberal' on a variety of issues and supported fringe or 'left' political parties. Respondents showed no pattern of pathology on health and well being indicators. They scored low on institutional integration measures (family, party, church, etc) but high on informal aspects (friends, colleagues, etc). Respondents used a wide range of licit and illicit drugs and were initiated into cocaine use later than other drugs. Cocaine was principally consumed by 'snorting' and used as a 'party' drug. Users reported controlling their use, with few problems, but acknowledged the existence of dangers and usually knew someone who had experienced problems from use.There was an obvious need to produce data which would facilitate comparisons with other drug using populations as well as with 'normal' samples from the general population. To this end, data were collected through two means: a self-completed questionnaire and an open-ended in-depth interview. The questionnaire combined a series of questions routinely employed in positivistic research. These included socio-demographic characteristics (age, sex, religion, education, income etc.), personality variables, social and support networks, personal relationships, well being and health and a series of attitude measures.The interview included five main sections: general patterns and history of illicit drug use, including whether, and if so how, users controlled their use of cocaine; supply and price; views on cocaine and the law; pros and cons of cocaine use; and cocaine and social contacts. Interviews were semi-structured and no topics were excised at the interview stage if the respondents felt they were relevant.The overall method of sample selection involved snowballing from initial start points (Biernacki and Waldorf, 1981). We had little problem in starting sampling chains, which varied in length-some were only three persons long, others up to 17. Interestingly, the best contacts for starting chains seemed to be those who fitted two characteristics2. First the connection between researcher and intermediary was a weak tie (Granovetter, 1973).
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