New Configurations of Justice and Services for the Vulnerable: Panacea or Panegyric?

Abstract

A ccessible justice (tribunals). integrated justice (drug courts). community justice (sentencing circles or "conferencing"), group justice (ulysses agreements). and contractual justice (private "settlements") are new ways of tackling old problems; often ones involving vulnerable groups.Vulnerable groups pose particular challenges about whether the state should intervene. in what ways. and whether through the legal. medical. or welfare systems. New programs. with new objectives and new sectoral boundaries. necessarily raise new questions. Questions about ethical foundations. Questions about implications for "citizenship". or for the rule of law. or for distributional equity.And questions about program "effectiveness". This paper identifies common themes and patterns in the reforms. including "active" rather than passive adjudication. judicial commitment to realisation of identified goals, intersectoral collaboration, community input or control. and use of privatised "contraetualist" metaphors. It considers the extent to which this reflects globalisation (harmonisation with civil law experience). or is emblematic of "postmodernism" (better attuning programs to diversity and fluidity). or other theoretical positions (such as contractualism and republican citizenship). It is argued that these experiments should be cautiously welcomed. subject to rigorous assessment of their merits. since their over-enthusiastic adoption risks breaches of fundamental ethical. civil citizenship, or medico-legal precepts. and may allow theory to outstrip its evidentiary base. Innovation and experimentation in criminal justice or civil treatment is commendable. especially in social policy areas littered with the detritus of prior program failures, or beset with tricky conundrums. Such experimentation has taken place for centuries, despite the thorny ethical or policy issues which can arise (Auerbach, 1983; Kittrie, 1971). A revised version of a paper presented at the 24th Congress of the Academy of Law and Mental Health, Toronto, 16-18June 1999. I am indebted to Myra Cheng for research assistance in finalising this paper, and comments by two anonymous reviewers.

Quasi-Compulsory Treatment of Drug Dependent Offenders: An International Literature Review

“…Much attention has been paid in recent years to the use of the criminal justice system to direct drug-related offenders into treatment (Anglin and Hser, 1991;Carney, 2000;Elzo, 1998, Kothari et al, 2002Nolan, 1998). We focus on this as quasi-compulsory treatment (QCT); or the treatment of drug-dependent offenders that is motivated, ordered, or supervised by the criminal justice system and takes place outside regular prisons.…”

Comparing Outcomes of ‘Voluntary’ and ‘Quasi-Compulsory’ Treatment of Substance Dependence in Europe

“…To date, much attention has been paid to the use of the criminal justice system to direct drug-related offenders into treatment in many countries worldwide [2][3][4][5][6] . In Europe, QCT is applied in a variety of ways.…”

Changing Practices: The Specialised Domestic Violence Court Process

“…In the prosecution of domestic violence cases, therapeutic jurisprudence seeks to increase the therapeutic consequences of law and when consistent with other important values, can reshape law and legal processes in ways to assist the accused and their victims (Winick 2000). Common elements of the problem-oriented court approach include re-engineering the criminal justice (and societal) response to a social problem, judicial monitoring, interdisciplinary collaboration, non-traditional roles in the courtroom and tangible case outcomes (Berman and Feinblatt 2001;Carney 2000).…”