Restorative justice in the criminal justice system: the McDonaldization of diversionary youth conferencing

Abstract

Restorative justice has fast become a crime control strategy employed across jurisdictions. Its development within youth justice has coincided with the rise of neoliberal policies. However, the focus of neoliberalism on managerialism, efficiency, calculability and control are not congruent with restorative justice. Perhaps unsurprisingly then youth conferencing has the potential to become standardised in order to integrate into the audit culture of criminal justice. What the thesis examines is the process and impact of diversionary youth conferencing, as a restorative justice process within the criminal justice system. Diversionary youth conferencing has been fully integrated into the youth justice system of Northern Ireland for over a decade and the findings of this thesis have provided a comprehensive account of how it is being influenced and moulded by the criminal justice system. The research adopted a qualitative, phenomenological methodology, involving non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with young people, youth conference coordinators and community representatives. Using triangulation of these four data sources to develop a comprehensive picture of youth conferencing. The theoretical framework of Ritzer’s neoliberal McDonaldization thesis (1983) was used to shed light on the research findings. This analysis has shown that during the conferencing process young people can feel vulnerable, ill-equipped, intimidated, labelled as a trouble maker, coerced, abandoned, as though they have no one they can trust, forced into apologising and forced into agreeing a conference plan. These findings are disempowering and victimising. Diversionary youth conferencing is a process in which legal requirements, risk and targets have taken the place of harm and equal participation of stakeholders. It has become a McDonaldised process driven by the need for efficiency, calculability and control of risk, resulting in a set of techniques used to administer youth justice.

Date of Award	Oct 2015
Original language	English
Supervisor	Linda Moore (Supervisor), Patricia Lundy (Supervisor) & Sam Mc Cready (Supervisor)