ABSTRACT
Informal practices of dispute resolution in the Global North have waxed and waned in popularity over the last three decades. They came to prominence in the 1970s as an alternative approach to the dominant utilitarian and retributive philosophies of punishment, in part as a practical and symbolic expression of disillusionment with the effectiveness of the formal criminal justice system (Abel 1982a, b; Matthews 1988; Mani 2002). They were also a response to widespread dissatisfaction with the increased punitiveness in sentencing, the self-evident risks associated with stigmatisation of offenders, the professionalisation of justice delivery, net-widening, and the remoteness of the judiciary from the community and its needs and interests. Such factors led ‘to arguments for more localised forums involving a genuine level of public participation’ (see also Matthews 1988: 5; Marshall 1988; Mani 2002). Informal alternatives, it was argued, would offer more flexibility and ‘produce greater community involvement in the process of settling disputes which in turn would strengthen social bonds, repair social relations and ultimately help to re-establish social cohesion’ (Matthews 1988: 7). Several different terms have been associated with informal modes of dispute processing and resolution – for example, ‘popular’, ‘community’, or simply ‘alternative’ justice. As Munck (1988) has noted, they are all terms that effectively have the same meaning, as all refer to processes which take place outside the formal justice system and its adversarial procedures (Matthews 1998; Knox and Monaghan 2002), such as mediation, reconciliation, arbitration and reparation.
