Moral work in victim–offender meetings

Birkbeck, Christopher; Smith, Greg

Abstract

Although many studies of restorative justice touch on its moral dimensions, they provide a rather fragmentary view of the moral work that takes place in meetings between victims and offenders. We treat moral work as a discursive phenomenon that emerges through the evaluative rendering of character and behaviour in extended sequences of talk. Using transcripts from four victim–offender meetings, we explore how participants work within the structural constraints of the script to develop or resist particular moral conceptions of the incident, themselves and each other. We identify the significant role of the facilitator in the construction of narratives and reflections by the offender and victim, and find that ambivalence, selective attention and persuasion all appear to be necessary for achieving the moral work implied by the script.

Citation

Birkbeck, C., & Smith, G. (2022). Moral work in victim–offender meetings. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 24(1), 59-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/17488958221095976

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: May 17, 2022
• Publication Date: May 16, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jun 9, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 9, 2022
• Journal: Criminology & Criminal Justice
• Print ISSN: 1748-8958
• Electronic ISSN: 1748-8966
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 59-78
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/17488958221095976
• Keywords: victim–offender meetings, Facilitators, scripts, restorative justice, moral work
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/17488958221095976
• Additional Information: Projects : The Dramatic Dimensions of Restorative Justice Conferences