International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 143

International Journal on Criminology
occurred, but rather how it occurred. In this sense, it is possible to inquire about the
degree to which the restorative procedure is respected, the link with procedural justice,
and the mistrust expressed. Like expressed remorse, the development of particular
feelings—not suggested or forced—correlates directly with the program's success,
namely, no longer wanting to live as a bad person, meeting and being able to make
apologies to the victim, and feeling involved in one's own process, in particular. At
the same time, it has also been demonstrated that it is not participation in a traditional
penal or criminal process that opens the way to possible recidivism, but rather the
feeling of mistrust some of the accused express towards the proceedings.
There is another interesting characteristic: the effects of restorative justice
on recidivism are not permanent and do not happen by magic. The decrease over
time of restorative justice's benefits on young offenders has been observed. Although
after a period of 6 months of observation, for example, the impact of a family group
conference remains relatively strong in terms of impact on recidivism, its rates of
success are much lower after two years. This effect could very simply be ascribed
to the fact that there are many changes that take place at the end of adolescence
and beginning of adulthood: the important lessons learned a few years earlier may
need to be repeated once the person becomes more socially independent (Kroovand
Hipple, Gruenewald, and McGarrell 2014).
The Re-Establishment of Peace or Social Harmony
To delve further into the issue of restorative justice success rates, a detour
is necessary into the existing literature on the subject of transitional justice, or
collective reparations for mass violations of human rights. Some writers believe
that, fundamentally, restorative justice was created only for these unique situations
(Omale 2006) and in this regard, numerous articles and books have been written
concerning Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (Leman Langlois 2008; Llewellyn
2007; Parmentier 2001) as well as the Rwandan gacacas (Paradelle and Dumont
2006), for example. The implicit question in all of these studies was whether such
restorative methods were more likely to ensure the recognition of the violation of
human rights than traditional trials and whether, over the long term, they would
guarantee peace. While it was proven that gacacas and truth and reconciliation
commissions acted differently on appeasing the societies concerned, there were,
nonetheless, important parallels to establish in terms of the meta-narrative process
of social healing and reconciliation (Ephgrave 2015). Results from the most recent
research on this topic are very mixed and just as interesting. Rather than focusing
on the micro- and macroscopic complexity of these models (which would have
mainly required, for example, studying a gacaca, the way it is conducted, trying
to subject it to a model, multiplying its results by the number of organized gacacas
or the number of participants and redividing it all depending on the successes or
setbacks observed collectively), studies looked at the simplest aspects and examined
the model's collective benefits. In this sense, to take one example, did the South
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