ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter further develops and grounds restorative policing within the context of the changes that have been outlined in the previous chapter in two ways. First, restorative policing is viewed as a new mode of governing crime, which Garland (1996) refers to as a ‘responsibilisation strategy’, which seeks to stimulate new forms of behaviour and to halt negative ones. Second, restorative policing is viewed as a framework through which to further develop the function of the police as a social agent that is increasingly reliant on partnerships to more effectively prevent and respond to crime (Faulkner 2003). As such, we view restorative policing simultaneously as a criminal and non-criminal method of intervention that seeks to promote beneficial forms of social capital. In seeking to further articulate our vision, we acknowledge the limit of what can realistically be achieved within an increasingly ‘bifurcated’ criminal justice approach (Bottoms 1977).1 However, we also perceive such a context as providing an opportunity for criminal justice agencies (such as the police) to devise creative ways in which they can respond to both the legitimacy and resourcing deficit that characterise criminal justice systems in contemporary neoliberal societies more broadly (Cavadino and Dignan 2007). In conceptual and theoretical terms this requires scholars of policing to explore and interrogate new ways of thinking about policing for the twenty-first century that extend beyond the traditional police use of force paradigm that has dominated police scholarship for the last half century (Brodeur 2010; Manning 2010). While we are making a case for quite a radical transformation of policing, we do acknowledge that a range of justice practices are needed to respond to the complex and varied problems that police officers face. We are certainly not suggesting that officers should divert all cases to a restorative process, nor that officers themselves will always have the necessary skills needed to deal with the complex social issues that underpin some types of offending (also see Vanfraechem 2009). We do believe, however, that it is necessary for the manner in which officers conduct their role at the ‘shallow end’ of criminal justice to evolve to ways that could be described as ‘democratically participatory’ and ‘restorative’. Such a transformative project will involve not only additions to the
‘tools’ that are available within the policing ‘toolbox’, but also a much more radical reframing of the ways in which we construe crime problems and our ‘conceptions of what constitutes a good solution’ (Johnstone 2008: 60). The basic argument of this chapter is that we need to reconnect with one another and so the purpose is to unpack how restorative policing might facilitate this. We begin by exploring what social capital is and what it’s associated strengths and weaknesses are perceived to be. Next, we investigate how social capital has been used as a driver for criminal justice reform, particularly in relation to the development and adoption of community policing and restorative justice. Finally, we make a case for a more transformative vision of restorative policing that takes its ultimate aim as the development of social capital and outline what this would entail.
