Abstract
Peacemaking or Healing circles are an approach to conflict resolution with long historical roots in many indigenous cultures going back to their so-called “talking circles.” Particularly the circle tradition of First Nation people of Canada has been further developed and cultivated for dealing with crime, leading to their use in juvenile and criminal justice as well as their spread across the border to Northern US, Hawaii and as far as Australia (often referred to as sentencing circles in these contexts). This chapter is based on an international pilot study (This research project took place during the period of September 1st, 2011 to August 31st, 2013 with the Criminology Institute of the University of Tuebingen as the project coordinator and was made possible thanks to the financial support of the European commission’s Criminal Justice Framework.) implementing circles for the first time in three European countries: Germany, Belgium and Hungary and offers further insights gained within this framework about their restorative capacities for victims and offenders as well as their crime prevention potentials. These insights are laid out and discussed with a specific focus on the potential benefits of Peacemaking circles for women and children as victims or offenders.
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Notes
- 1.
Discussing potential reasons for these dynamics would be too far a stretch considering the framework of this chapter but nevertheless an interesting endeavor.
- 2.
It refers to a historic code of conduct according to which the lives of women and children were to be saved first in a life-threatening situation such as a ship wreck.
- 3.
A Swedish study analyzing data on ship wrecks by counting survivors could not find supporting evidence of this notion such as many more wrecks with more female survivors than male ones: Elinder and Erixson (2012), Every man for himself: Gender, norms and survival in maritime disasters, Uppsala Universitet, Sweden (Archive).
- 4.
See for example: UNICEF Annual Report (2014).
- 5.
FRA, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, and Study (2014).
- 6.
Ibid., p 28.
- 7.
Latimer et al. (2005), p 128.
- 8.
Originally, even judicial representatives such as police officers, lawyers, prosecutors or judges are included in the circle process to represent the legal perspective on the crime at stake. However, considering that our pilot study took place in countries governed by the principle of legality, the German and Belgian teams refrained from this idea. In our view, judicial representatives can be included but are not a requirement for implementing circles. We would even argue that they can pose additional risks to the circle dialogue such as their higher status positions as legal experts violating the equality of the circle participants. In addition their legal perspective applies a “win or lose” logic to the process, which was seen as counterproductive for a successful circle dialogue, etc. Our Hungarian colleagues found ways of integrating some judicial representatives in some of their circles. For more information please see the full study report: Weitekamp (Ed.) (2015).
- 9.
This research project took place during the period of September 1st, 2011 to August 31st, 2013 with the Institute of Criminology of the University of Tuebingen as the project coordinator and was made possible thanks to the financial support of the European Commission.
- 10.
For this reason, all three study sites included law/legal experts in their implementation teams. For Germany, this was the role of Hans-Jürgen Kerner, for Belgium, Stephan Parmentier, and for Hungary two representatives of the National Institute of Criminology (OKRI), Tünde Barabás and Szandra Windt joined the local team as legal experts and research partners.
- 11.
While these can certainly also be “extended” to some degree and additional support persons can be added, it is not an explicit goal of the method to aim for such an extension or to even reach out to the community.
- 12.
The main author of this chapter, Dr. Beate Ehret was personally participating in a training program about Restorative circles, the way Dominic Barter has developed and implemented them with great success in the favelas of Brasil. As a more critical assessment, I learned that while they also strongly adhere to the basic principles of Restorative Justice, they do not use a talking piece and the approach does not make as much of an effort to arrive at full inclusivity and equality as Peacemaking circles would. When applying Barter’s approach, a lot more responsibility is in the hands of the mediator, who is in charge of carefully balancing everything out.
- 13.
While Phil and Harold Gatensby are acknowledged experts of Peacemaking, healing and sentencing circles they did not publish about them. They prefer the traditional First Nation way of spreading the word about these restorative justice models in face to face encounters, by telling stories, and by facilitating circles as role models as well as by providing plenty of opportunity for participants for learning about them via role plays.
- 14.
Such convenience samples do not provide justifiable grounds for testing hypotheses or drawing generalizations for the population at large. And the small sample size does not warrant any further split of the general sample of participants into specific groups of interest such as men versus women or children versus adults.
- 15.
For Germany see TOA Standards (2013), English version.
- 16.
Weitekamp (Ed.) (2015). Developing Peacemaking Circles in a European Context. Results of a joint research project in Belgium, Germany and Hungary. University of Tuebingen. The main authors of this report are Ehret, Beate: Szego, Dora, and Dhondt, Davy.
- 17.
See for example in 2004: Acorn, Annalise. Compulsory Compassion: A Critique of Restorative Justice. Vancouver: UBC Press.
- 18.
Presentation during the concluding workshop at the university of Tuebingen, August 2013. Confirmed through personal conversation between her and the main author of this chapter.
- 19.
It has been empirically proven in numerous studies that male domination over women can lead to women’s speech getting talked over, women getting interrupted more often than men and women getting less time to speak (see for example: Campbell et al. (2001); James and Clarke (1993); Smith-Lovin and Brody (1989)).
- 20.
In a way, the circle rhythm teaches patience and the more participants are included, the more patience it takes to go through the motions. However, some participants also voiced criticism about this aspect and were unhappy with the slow pace and the long waiting times before you get your turn to speak. However, in most circles they noticed later on, that the circle managed to make progress and solutions could be generated even if the process of getting there was perceived as too slow.
- 21.
A designated site for skaters as well as skateboarders with a half-pipe and jumping ramps, etc.
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Ehret, B., Szego, D., Dhondt, D. (2016). Peacemaking Circles, Their Restorative and Crime Prevention Capacities for Women and Children: Insights from a European Pilot Study. In: Kury, H., Redo, S., Shea, E. (eds) Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28424-8_13
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