No description available.

No description available.

This thesis explores how Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk's 2008 novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, engages with William Blake's life and his writings on animal welfare and speaks to current conversations about multispecies justice in the environmental humanities. It argues, first, that in recognizing how this novel's protagonist, Janina, selectively reads Blake to rationalize retributive justice, readers should resist a tendency to mistake this character for Tokarczuk's ideal advocate for environmental ethics. Secondly, it asserts that legal scholars' division between retributive and restorative justice offers valuable framework for approaching both this novel and ongoing debates about multispecies relations and environmental justice.

No description available.

While the process of restorative justice is fairly new, several programs have been implemented globally and found to be effective in various aspects over the past 30 years. Very little empirical research has been gathered from these global programs though members of the criminal justice community as well as members of the general public have expressed interest in learning more about the programs and effectiveness and opinions of the programs. This study takes a closer look at what victims have expressed as being important to them regarding the criminal justice system, and satisfaction with how their cases are handled in both traditional court proceedings as well as through restorative justice processes.

With the rapid growth of juvenile offender diversion programs, which use many nontraditional sanctions, the effectiveness of sanction combinations in juvenile diversion programs and in each individual program needs to be evaluated. Those making sanctioning decisions currently do so based on intuition rather than using an evidence- or theory-based approach. Considerable research has examined the relationship between offender risk factors and recidivism (who is more likely to reoffend?) and between offender risk factors and sanctions (who is more likely to receive what sanctions?), but little is known about the relationship between sanctions and recidivism (which sanctions best reduce recidivism and for whom?). Furthermore, recidivism studies vary drastically in how they measure or quantify recidivism. This variability of approach makes comparing studies difficult and provides a less-than-complete picture of recidivism in general. The present study used data from one specific youth diversion program to test certain hypotheses of sanctioning by developing and testing a model for assigning sanction combinations to certain offenders on the basis of their individual characteristics. The study first developed measurement models for Offender Risk Propensity, Multiplicity of Sanctions, and Recidivism using structural equation modeling (SEM). Then predictive models were developed to test specific relationships. Understanding the effectiveness of certain sanction packages on certain offenders can form the basis for effective sanctioning in youth diversion programs. This study sought to answer three research questions: What is the best way to measure recidivism? Does completion of a restorative justice program reduce recidivism? Which sanctions, if any, reduce recidivism for specific offender types? To answer the first question: a iv multi-indicator latent construct of recidivism did a very good job of measuring variation in recidivism. Multiple indicators analyzed simultaneously produced a robust tool that can be used in other recidivism studies and help to reduce comparability issues between studies. The recidivism construct, when tested as a function of completion of the restorative justice program, was seen to produce a significant model having an overall good fit with the data. Thus to answer the second research question: offenders’ completion status for the restorative justice program was shown to be a significant predictor of the latent construct of recidivism at the 0.05 level (two-tailed), with those who failed to complete (or chose not to participate) having higher recidivism than did those who completed the program. To answer the third research question: the assignment of specific sanctions (both those suggested by research and theory and those traditionally assigned by this and similar programs) on the entire data set (and on various subsets) of this study have no statistically significant impact on recidivism at the 0.05 level (two-tailed). The findings suggest many policy implications. Consistency is all but nonexistent in recidivism measurements in the academic literature and in program review studies. A multiindicator latent construct of recidivism, such as the one proposed and proven effective in this study, provides a more complete picture than simply conceptualizing recidivism by one dummy variable. This recidivism model can be used as the endogenous variable to evaluate programs and their practices and could reduce the problem of study comparability. This could lead to a better understanding of program characteristics and their impact on offender success. This study also found that completion of the Neighborhood Restorative Justice Program was a significant predictor of recidivism, yet none of the eleven most commonly assigned v sanctions were seen to have a significant impact on recidivism for any subgroup. Proponents of restorative justice argue that it is the programs’ characteristics and not their specific activities that make the programs successful. Reintegrative Shaming Theory and Labeling Theory support this claim and suggest the best approach to address youth criminal behavior is to admonish the act and not the actor, have the offender and community agree on a plan to make the community whole after that criminal act, and prevent repeated interaction with the formal criminal justice system which encourages the youth to see themself as a deviant and engage in further deviant behavior. These characteristics should be further examined and widely employed if confirmed.

The Northern region of Uganda has been plagued by violent conflict for over two decades. The Lord¿s Resistance Army (LRA) has been waging war against the current government of Uganda under the leadership of President Museveni. The Acholi community resident in the North of Uganda has been most affected by this war. In recent years however Northern Uganda has enjoyed relative calm following an agreement for the cessation of hostilities between the LRA and the government to allow for peace talks. Following the anticipated end of this conflict, the international community, the government and local organisations have engaged in a number of interventions and mechanisms that would assist in peace building. A fundamental intervention that has been formulated and administered to this end is the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme for the ex-LRA combatants. The DDR process has had the sole objective of enabling formerly abducted children to transform their lives from violence into civility and community. It has been the premise that if this transformation were to occur then societies could be made peaceful. There has been growing support for these programmes but there has been very little analysis done of the utility of these programmes and the consequential impacts that these programmes have on the local indigenous communities. Though well intentioned, there is much work to be done to assess the utility and success of reintegration initiatives in granting the formerly abducted children and local populations¿ lifestyles that are reasonably free from fear and want. / John & Elnora Ferguson Trust

Justice and reconciliation are both highly complex concepts that are often described as incompatible alternatives in the aftermath of violent conflicts, despite the fact that both are fundamental to peacebuilding in societies divided by the legacies of political violence, oppression and exclusion. This thesis examines the relationship between justice and reconciliation, pursued as essential ingredients of peacebuilding. After advancing an inclusive working conceptual framework in which seemingly competing conceptions regarding justice and reconciliation are reconceived to work compatibly for building peace, the thesis presents the results of an in-depth case study of Rwanda¿s post-genocide justice and reconciliation endeavour. The thesis focuses on Rwanda¿s justice and reconciliation efforts and their relationship to the ongoing challenge of reformulating Rwandans¿ social identities. A field research conducted for this study revealed that issues of victimhood, justice and reconciliation were highly contested among individuals and groups with varied experiences of the country¿s violent history. Resolving these conflicting narratives so that each Rwandan¿s narrative/identity is dissociated from the negation of the other¿s victimhood emerged as a paramount challenge in Rwanda¿s quest for justice and reconciliation. Rwanda¿s approach to justice and reconciliation can be seen as an innovative both/and approach that seeks to overcome dichotomous thinking by addressing various justice and reconciliation concerns in compatible ways. However, by limiting its efforts to the issues that arose from crimes committed under the former regimes, the justice and reconciliation endeavour of the Rwandan government fails to reconcile people¿s conflicting narratives of victimhood, which will be essential to transform the existing racialised and politicised ethnic identities of Rwandan people. / Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID)

In the aftermath of the bloody twenty-year internal conflict in Peru, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, or CVR) documented the massive human rights violations by Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian state. The CVR contextualized these abuses by producing a broad historical narrative which has fomented the creation of a new discourse in Peruvian cultural production. This thesis is concerned with how the CVR and the post-conflict search for reconciliation have influenced contemporary Peruvian literature. This paper will focus on the ‘Redención' trilogy by novelist Alonso Cueto. The three novels explore notions of forgiveness and reconciliation between perpetrators and victims of the conflict. Beginning with La hora azul (2005), the first chapter investigates the reliance on neoliberal reconciliation logic in the CVR (monetary reparations, etc.) as well as the gestures towards affective exchanges. It also explores the ways in which La hora azul stages these reliances within restitution discourse in Peru. In the second chapter, I examine La pasajera (2015) and further explore the ways in which reconciliation is tied to both affect and neoliberal logic. This leads to a discussion on how affect and the free-market work together, rather than as competing systems of exchange and how Cueto emphasizes the proximity of the victim and the perpetrator in the novel. Finally, I conclude by analyzing La viajera del viento (2016). This chapter continues to focus on the proximity of the victim and the perpetrator and how this ethically uncomfortable discourse may actually make way for new modes of forgiveness between victims and perpetrators.

No description available.