Restorative Justice Services: The Role of Panel Caseworkers and Support Caseworkers

The role of reparation panel caseworker and support caseworker represents one of the most important positions within the RJS panel process. Caseworkers are not legally trained ‘conventional’ lawyers but consist of community members who are recruited and trained in legal and restorative justice principles.21 _{These reparation programme}

representatives have been described as coming from ‘all walks of life, backgrounds, interests, professions and age demographic’, and have also been said to ‘demonstrate a shared interest and commitment to (restorative justice) values, to fair play and equality, and a commitment to social justice’.22 _{It has been further argued that the recruitment}

21 _{Those caseworkers interviewed stated that they had replied to a nationwide based online}

advertisement. As regards the amount of training required, one caseworker stated that she had undergone three weeks of observing panels, seeing approximately 15 cases within that time frame. Much of the information relating to the caseworker and support caseworker roles and referred to within this section was received as part of interviews with a caseworker and support caseworker, Dublin, 11th

September 2014.

22 _{Peter Keeley, ‘Restorative Justice in the Community. A Partnership Approach’. In Kevin Lalor, Fergus}

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and training of people from the community to manage reparation case files can serve to strengthen one of the reparation panel model’s fundamental aims, that of active community ownership and participation. The programme has previously highlighted its awareness of the view that facilitating restorative contracts with offenders and between those offenders and direct victims can provide an important and meaningful role for the community generally.23

The RJS model had one full time panel caseworker, one part-time support caseworker and a total of nine part-time panel caseworkers. The support caseworker role was concerned mainly with administration duties and public relations work. For this role, there was no specific restorative justice element to the training given. Other duties included the coordination of particular panels and regular liaison with the courts and solicitors. The other caseworker roles were more directly involved with specific offenders and actual reparation panel dynamics. The part-time staff were paid on a case by case basis. All staff were paid by the Department of Justice and Equality, through the Probation Service. The various backgrounds of these representatives included previous volunteering roles in drug addiction and homelessness projects, as well as full-time social work and Health Service Executive (HSE) roles. The amount of cases managed by these caseworkers from January to September 2014 totalled between 130 and 140 referrals approximately. The support caseworker role was basically to act as liaison between probation officers, solicitors and the court system in managing referrals and placing them with caseworkers.

Some concern should be noted at this point in that it was claimed within interviews that, due to a lack of funding and staff within the process as a whole, there were instances in which a judge would refer a particular case towards reparation but the RJS scheme would not receive the relevant information. This was due to a breakdown in, and lack of, communication between Probation officers, solicitors, and RJS members. In essence,

(Dublin: Centre for Social and Educational Research, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2007) 91, 93. Available at www.dit.ie/cser/media/ditcser/images/young-people-and-crime.pdf.

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this caused a vacuum between a proposed referral and a reparation option. Therefore, some proposed reparation cases were, it was claimed, being lost in the system with the result being that some offenders were not getting the opportunity to participate in the reparation process. While the number of cases this applied to was said to be small, it still asks serious procedural questions as to the fairness of the referral system generally. On occasion, it has been the offender themselves who has contacted the RJS scheme after a referral has been proposed in court due to a lack of Probation staff present and a perceived unwillingness by certain solicitors to carry the process forward.24

The importance of both caseworker and support caseworker roles within reparation panel procedure was illustrated on a number of occasions. These particular roles combined tasks such as preparing referred offenders for the reparation process at pre- panel meetings and engaging with rehabilitative organisations as part of the finalised contract agreement.25 _{They can also act as a valuable conduit between the reparation}

process and the court, ensuring the correct documentation, such as contract terms and agreements, are available to the referring judge for deliberation. Caseworkers sit directly beside participating offenders during panel discussions and have been seen to clarify disputed facts during case discussions and inform the panel representatives of any additional information.26 _{For example, during one observation the caseworker was}

able to inform the other panel members before the offender had entered the room and before any case discussion had begun, of a number of relationship issues relating to that participant.27 _{In addition, while panel caseworkers are primarily acting as an advocate}

for the participant, they have also been observed helping to further emphasise

24 _{It was further claimed by a RJS based caseworker that a majority of solicitors would fail to get in contact}

with their organisation after a proposed referral.

25 _{Such organisations can include local, community based alcohol and drug awareness groups, financial}

advice and debt management organisations, either voluntary or professionally managed.

26 _{For example, some offenders will write letters of apology or offer sums of reparation after they have}

been referred to the reparation process but before they have attended the actual panel meeting in order to illustrate their remorse. Such letters and offers of reparation will be shown to the panel by the caseworker as evidence of the offender’s attempts at repairing the harm. It is then decided at the end of these particular panel meetings whether or not further reparation tasks are needed within the proposed contract agreement.

27 _{It was noted that the female offender was homeless and living in sheltered accommodation due to the}

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restorative principles such as offender accountability within panel discussions. While an element of coercion remains a possibility within this caseworker, participating offender relationship, it should be submitted that this was not evidenced within my series of observations. During one case which involved criminal damage and an attempted car theft, the attending caseworker forcibly outlined to the participant that ‘it is not easy to replace a car window. Don’t think that it is…the owner might not be able to afford to repair the damage…the owner may need the vehicle to go to work or bring children to school. Jobs can be put at risk due to the lack of transport’. The caseworker within this panel discussion adopted the role of surrogate victim and potential car owner and attempted to increase the accountability factor by illustrating the depth of harm that can ensue due to criminal acts such as car thefts. Such an approach within case discussions, especially taking into account the fact that victims for the most part did not directly attend RJS reparation panels, can help an offender to better appreciate the harm caused by their criminal behaviour. It can also serve to limit the various ‘neutralisation techniques’ with which offenders generally have been argued to employ as a means of diluting the very nature and damage caused by their crimes.28 _{It could be}

legitimately argued, therefore, that this caseworker role within RJS panel practice was a multi-faceted one. It included administrative and preparative tasks as well as acting as a support to participating offenders within panel deliberations. 29 _{Caseworkers and}

support caseworkers represented a vital link between the court, the panel process and the participating offender themselves. The role could also include, as illustrated by the example above, lending an authoritative, ‘surrogate victim’ themed voice within panel discussions in an attempt to further highlight the harm caused by crime.

28 _{See Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, ‘Techniques of Neutralisation: A Theory of Delinquency’ (1957)}

22 American Sociological Review 664, 667-668. The authors have famously argued that juvenile offenders can ‘neutralise’ their behaviour by such psychological manoeuvres as denying injury, denying the existence of a victim and condemning those who are charged with punishing their crimes. Although Matza and Sykes were primarily discussing juvenile offenders, it can be argued that some evidence of these stated techniques did appear to be present within a number of the adult based panel discussions. For example, one offender who had admitted to assault argued that the victim had started the confrontation, and that his injuries were not as bad as was initially being claimed. This technique is explored further within Chapter 4.

29 _{As will be explained later in this chapter, the RJC ‘caseworker’ role fell to the programme manager}

herself who acted as facilitator, conduit between the courts and the programme, conduit between victims, offenders and the programme, as well as managing the overall process.

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2.6 Restorative Justice Services and Restorative Justice in the Community: The Role of