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FDAP Annual Conference 2010. Building Bridges: Promoting Attachment through Restorative Justice Michael Shiner London School of Economics. Introduction. Why is attachment important Attachment and drug use Restorative justice and reintegration. Attachment theory.
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FDAP Annual Conference 2010 Building Bridges: Promoting Attachment through Restorative Justice Michael Shiner London School of Economics
Introduction • Why is attachment important • Attachment and drug use • Restorative justice and reintegration
Attachment theory • John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth • Humans are relationship seeking • The secure base • Mental maps • Attachment in adulthood • Correlates and consequences
Attachment and crime • Travis Hirschi (1969) Causes of Delinquency • The Independent Committee on Youth Crime and Antisocial Behaviour • D.J. Smith (2010) A New Response to Youth Crime • John H. Laub and Robert J. Sampson (2003) Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70
Attachment and drug use • Dean Whittington (2007) Beaten into Violence: Anger, Masculinities, Alcohol, Narcotics • Philip J. Flores (2004) Addiction as an Attachment Disorder • Patricia A. Trehan (2007) A Woman’s Place? Identifying the Needs of Female Drug Users and Responses in Drug Treatment Policy and Practice
Richard Pryor I fell in love with the pipe. It controlled everything I did. It would say: ‘Don't answer the phone Rich - we got smokin' to do’.
Working with attachment • Dealing with trauma and promoting capacity for attachment • Therapy, therapeutic alliance, group therapy (fellowship) • Criminal justice
What is RJ? • Crime is a violation of one person by another (interpersonal conflict) • When one person is violated by another the focus is on problem-solving, on establishing liabilities and obligations • Through dialogue and negotiation • Restitution is a means of restoring both parties, reconciliation is the goal • Justice defined as righting relationships
What does restorative justice have to do with attachment? • Relational • Works through, and seeks to repair, attachments • Reintegrative shaming • Communitarian
RJ and drug use • Disconnect • Effectiveness and victimless crimes • Braithwaite (2001: p. 227) - A new criminal law of substance abuse • Laments way restorative justice is prone to ‘sweeping substance abuse under the carpet’.
From punishment to injustice Braithwaite (2001: p. 229, 233: So, restorative justice sidesteps questions of whether it is right or wrong to punish substance abuse with the following move. If substance abuse is part of the story of injustice, part of what is important to understand to come to terms with the injustice, then both the substance abuse and the injustice it causes are likely to be among the things participants will wish to see healed in the restorative process. …one can be a liberal opponent of criminalizing victimless crime while supporting the criminalization of effects or forms of substance abuse that do endanger others. We can be opposed to prohibition and support drunk driving laws.
RJ, motivation and recovery • Motivation gap (readiness to change) • Love and empathy = motivation • Key to success of RJ The hope is that the process of confronting hurts and acknowledging shame to loved ones they care about will motivate a commitment to rehabilitation in a way that meetings with more unfamiliar victims would not (Braithwaite, 2001: p. 228).
Recovery and making amends Twelve steps: Members made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all (step eight) Members made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except where to do so would injure them or others (step nine)
A restorative drug strategy The key institutional questions are therefore not about whether to punish but about how to trigger and support problem-solving dialogue where the people who count in this particular life have a voice Braithwaite, 2001: p. 242
Points of intervention • Criminal justice settings • Schools and youth provision • Drugs agencies • Prisoner release
Reading Braithwaite, J. (1989) Crime, shame and reintegration, Cambridge University Press Braithwaite, J. (2001) ‘Restorative justice and a new criminal law of substance abuse’, Youth and Society, 33 (2): 227-248 Roche, D. (2003) Accountability in Restorative Justice, Clarendon