Making sense of Tom: seeing the reparative in restorative justice

TY - JOUR

T1 - Making sense of Tom

T2 - seeing the reparative in restorative justice

AU - Froggett, L

AU - Farrier , A

AU - Poursanidou, Konstantina

PY - 2007

Y1 - 2007

N2 - This paper considers the contribution of a creative writing project to restorative youth justice though a case study in which a young offender is filmed working on a one‐to‐one basis with a poet over a number of weeks. The restitutive and reparative dimensions of restorative justice are identified and the article shows reparative processes at work through transcribed extracts of video data. The analysis is informed by a psycho‐societal perspective which attends to the dialogue around social roles and identities and the intersubjective process of the sessions. It considers the liminal role of the poet in relation to the youth justice system and the moral community which surrounds the young man in question. Conclusions from short‐term case‐based studies are necessarily tentative and must await larger longitudinal studies. However, the material presented here shows how in using the position of the artist to good effect, the poet succeeds in helping the young offender find a language in which he begins to develop self‐reflective capacity, moral responsibility and hopes for a better future.

AB - This paper considers the contribution of a creative writing project to restorative youth justice though a case study in which a young offender is filmed working on a one‐to‐one basis with a poet over a number of weeks. The restitutive and reparative dimensions of restorative justice are identified and the article shows reparative processes at work through transcribed extracts of video data. The analysis is informed by a psycho‐societal perspective which attends to the dialogue around social roles and identities and the intersubjective process of the sessions. It considers the liminal role of the poet in relation to the youth justice system and the moral community which surrounds the young man in question. Conclusions from short‐term case‐based studies are necessarily tentative and must await larger longitudinal studies. However, the material presented here shows how in using the position of the artist to good effect, the poet succeeds in helping the young offender find a language in which he begins to develop self‐reflective capacity, moral responsibility and hopes for a better future.

U2 - 10.1080/02650530601173672

DO - 10.1080/02650530601173672

M3 - Article

SN - 0265-0533

VL - 21

SP - 103

EP - 117

JO - Journal of Social Work Practice

JF - Journal of Social Work Practice

IS - 1

ER -