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Moral work in victim–offender meetings

Birkbeck, Christopher; Smith, Greg

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Authors

Greg Smith



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

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