Criminal sentencing has grown into an increasingly interactive process featuring a multiplicity of potential actors—prosecution, defence, the individual convicted of the crime, probation officers and case workers, victims or their families, the police, community representatives, community workers, and even academics. The philosophical foundations of sentencing scholarship, however, regularly assume a model of judicial solitude in which sentencing judges are separate and apart from other actors. This article suggests the need to take sentencing’s interactivity and its politics seriously and draws on (...) democratic theory to address this gap. Accordingly, it argues that listening—as conceived of by deliberative democrats—is essential to a relational ethic that ensures both the legitimacy and quality of sentencing decisions, particularly in cases involving marginalized communities. In doing so, it turns to judicial practice and highlights both the need and possibilities for listening to be taken up as an explicit feature of judicial ethics. (shrink)

In his paper “Public Reason and the Justification of Punishment,” Zachary Hoskins develops and defends an idea of “public reason” that might be applicable to debates over punishment in the Western world. This short reply takes issue with some of Hoskins’ conclusions (while agreeing with many of his premises), and suggests that contra Hoskins, many versions of retribution are not compatible with the ideal of public reason as Rawls articulated it. Instead, debates over criminal justice and punishment should properly revolve (...) around the goods of public safety and harm reduction—rather than around any of the supposed metaphysical goods achieved by retributive punishment. (shrink)

Our research describes the experiences, views, and attitudes of participants of mediation dialogue groups involving non-related traffic accidents regarding their participation and related topics, such as responsibility, rehabilitation, and restoration. In Belgium, the criminal law holds that victims and offenders need to be informed about the option of entering a restorative mediation process during criminal proceedings. Mediation is voluntary and provided by an independent state-funded organization. We collected the data through individual semi-structured in-depth interviews with participants of two mediation dialogue (...) groups. The data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis. We identified three main themes: (a) the importance of shared stories, (b) blurred boundaries, and (c) opportunities and obstacles for repair. Overall, our analysis suggests that mediation involving similar but non-related incidents may provide the participants with valuable knowledge and insights about one another's lives and thoughts and lead to mutual understanding and support. For some, it may even involve a transformative experience. Importantly, our analysis reveals that (a) the presence of a “shared story” and (b) a group dynamic in which participants feel sufficiently at ease with each other are pivotal to achieving a sense of connection and resonance that allows for such mutual understanding and support. These appear to be prerequisites for enabling any kind of healing. (shrink)