Richards, Kelly --- "Youth Justice, Restorative Justice and Gendered Violence -Oh My! The Rise and Rise of Offender 'Accountability' in Contemporary Penality" [2017] CICrimJust 14; (2017) 29(1) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 89

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Contemporary Comment

Youth Justice, Restorative Justice and Gendered Violence — Oh My! The Rise and Rise of Offender ‘Accountability’ in Contemporary Penality

Kelly Richards^[*]

Abstract

The notion of offender ‘accountability’ has emerged as a key concept in contemporary penality in recent years, perhaps especially in the areas of youth justice, restorative justice, and gendered violence. However, the criminological literature offers few definitions of and little critical scholarly engagement with the meanings, aims and parameters of offender ‘accountability’. This comment begins to address this gap by drawing attention to this widely used but taken-for-granted concept and starting a critical conversation about offender ‘accountability’. After documenting its widespread acceptance, this comment charts some of the various meanings of the term implicit in the criminological canon. It also posits a series of questions that criminal justice scholars and professionals might consider in relation to the theoretical and practical application of offender ‘accountability’.

It concludes with a brief consideration of future research questions.

Keywords: offender accountability – youth justice – restorative justice –

gendered violence – circles of support and accountability

Introduction

Consider the following three vignettes.

Vignette 1: In 2013, a 14-year-old male is sentenced in the ACT Children’s Court for a number of sexual offences against his young cousins. In sentencing the young man, Magistrate Fryer discusses the various rationales for sentencing — such as community protection and deterrence — and goes on to state:

A relevant purpose of sentencing is making the young person accountable for his action ... In these regards I cannot imagine any process more likely to do that than what has happened in this case — the young person to be facing such serious charges to which he has pleaded guilty, then to sit and listen to and be confronted by the heartfelt and emotional readings of the victim impact statements by his aunts and uncles, the parents of the victims....The fact that he was prepared to, in this courtroom, in front of his parents and his victims’ parents, stand and so articulately and emotionally apologise for his actions, demonstrated to me that he is truly remorseful for what occurred ... He has now been held accountable for what he did (Giuliana Milner v JN at [14]–[15], emphasis added).

Vignette 2: In the wake of the Columbine High School shootings, the Consequences for Juvenile Offenders Bill was introduced in the United States (‘US’) to ensure harsher consequences for young people tried under the federal system. The Bill was passed, not as the Consequences for Juvenile Offenders Act, but as the Juvenile Offender Accountability and Rehabilitation Act 1999 (US) (Kole 2001). On introducing the Bill, its instigator, Republican congressman Bill McCollum, ‘pointed to a significant increase in juvenile crimes, and correlated this increase with the low standards of [offender] “accountability” currently present in the ... juvenile system’ (Kole 2001, p. 231).

Vignette 3: In 1994, the Reverend Harry Nigh received a call from panicked Correctional Service Canada psychologist Bill Palmer, who was searching for someone to help with the release of prisoner Charlie Taylor, a man with numerous child sex convictions who was about to be released into an Ontario community without correctional supervision (Wilson et al. 2008). Nigh, who had worked with prisoners in restorative justice programs, decided to create a ‘Circle of Support’ for Charlie. Nigh was familiar with the concept of a Circle of Support, in which community volunteers support a person in need, as they had been operating in his community to assist parents of children with disabilities (Richards 2011).

As Circles of Support for child sex offenders gained traction across Canada in subsequent years, the name of the program was changed from Circles of Support to ‘Circles of Support and Accountability’, to acknowledge the perspectives of victims’ groups (Richards 2011, pp. 9–10, emphasis added).

The rise and rise of offender ‘accountability’

In criminal justice legislation, policy, practice and discourse, the notion that offenders ought to be ‘held accountable’ for their actions has gained enormous credence in recent years. Anyone familiar with the criminological canon will almost certainly be familiar with the trope that offenders must be ‘held accountable’. In addition to increasingly appearing in legislation, a heightened focus on offender ‘accountability’ has emerged across diverse criminal justice programs. This is particularly the case in programs for perpetrators of gendered violence. As Hamel (2012, p. 124) argues, ‘holding domestic violence perpetrators accountable for their abusive behavior is the number one objective of batterer intervention programs’. Indeed, one of the principles of the widely recognised Duluth model of domestic violence perpetrator intervention is offender ‘accountability’ (Miller et al. 2005; see further Chung et al. 2006; Levenson 2011).

Youth justice is another area in which an increased focus on offender ‘accountability’ has emerged (Gray 2007). A search of the website of the New York-based Center for Court Innovation reveals numerous youth justice programs with a focus on offender ‘accountability’, including Youth Accountability Boards (Lynch 2004), and a Juvenile Accountability Court (Labriola 2007). Still in the US, an entire national funding stream — the Juvenile Accountability Block Grants Program, administered by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention — is dedicated to ‘helping States and communities develop and implement programs that hold youth accountable for delinquent behavior’ (Slowikowski 2009, p. 1). According to documentation for this funding stream, ‘holding youth accountable for their delinquent behavior is a cornerstone of the national response to juvenile delinquency’ (Slowikowski 2009, p. 1).

The emergence of the discourse of youth ‘accountability’ in criminal justice programs reaches well beyond the US, with New Zealand’s Te Hurihanga program aiming to ‘hold the young offender accountable and encourage him to take responsibility for the offending behaviour’ (Warren & Fraser 2009, p. 35), and Canada’s youth justice framework, introduced in the 2000s, having a key focus on the ‘accountability’ of young offenders (Hogeveen 2005). Nearly all youth justice legislation across Australia includes the principle that young offenders must be held accountable for their crimes (Cunneen, White & Richards 2015; see Ward & Kupchik 2009 on the rise of youth ‘accountability’ in American legislation).

Perhaps more significantly, a range of disparate criminal justice measures — from Victim Impact Statements (American Probation and Parole Association 2009) to electronic monitoring (Washington House Republicans 2013) — are increasingly retrospectively reframed in terms of fostering offender ‘accountability’ instead of, or in addition to, their existing rationales. Rarely, however, has there been an attempt in the literature to define this concept or justify its centrality among responses to crime.

The term ‘accountability’ as it relates to offenders is used unproblematically, with little critical engagement with its meaning, aims or parameters. Even the literature on Circles of Support and Accountability (‘COSA’) — which explicitly seek to produce ‘accountability’ — has little to say on the matter (Richards 2011; Thomas et al. 2014). Similarly, with a small number of exceptions (Luna 2003; Umbriet 1995; Zehr 1990), scholarship on restorative justice — of which offender ‘accountability’ is presented as a key conceptual plank — is surprisingly quiet. Notable exceptions are Braithwaite (2006) and Roche (2003), although the latter in particular focuses predominantly on public or institutional forms of ‘accountability’ (that is, to whom are restorative justice conferences ‘accountable’?) rather than the ‘accountability’ of offenders within these processes. Nonetheless, Braithwaite (2006) discusses offender ‘accountability’ more specifically, helpfully arguing that while ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’ are related concepts, they can be differentiated on the grounds that ‘responsibility’ is an obligation to do something right (it requires action), while ‘accountability’ involves public justification (albeit not always by the person responsible for the misdeed) (see further Braithwaite & Roche 2000). According to Braithwaite (2006), in a restorative justice process, offender ‘accountability’ occurs when an offender gives an account of what he or she proposes to do in order to right a wrong.

This comment seeks to build on the above to start a critical conversation about offender ‘accountability’ more broadly. In light of its increased prominence among responses to offending, I argue that it is vital to consider how this concept is currently used, and how it might be used in future. The remainder of this comment considers these questions and concludes with a brief discussion of a potential future research agenda.

Conceptual confusion about offender ‘accountability’

Let’s return to the three vignettes, which highlight the competing constructions of offender ‘accountability’ discussed below. In the first, the magistrate constructs the court process itself (the offender’s display of remorse and apology to the victims’ families) as a mechanism of offender ‘accountability’. It is therefore the sentencing process, rather than the sentence, that holds the offender ‘accountable’. This is quite distinct from other sentencing rationales (for example, rehabilitation) that aim to amend the offender’s behaviour, where it is often during the outcome of the sentencing process rather than the process that the substance of the sentence is to be realised. Another noteworthy point about this case is that Magistrate Fryer depicts ‘accountability’ as finite, declaring that the young person ‘has now been held accountable for what he did’. This suggests that notions of offender ‘accountability’ will not govern future responses to the young man’s behaviour. Finally, Magistrate Fryer presents offender ‘accountability’ as closely connected to emotion; it is an outward display of the inner feelings of the young man. She says, ‘[H]e was prepared to ... stand and so articulately and emotionally apologise ... he is truly remorseful’. Simultaneously, she depicts ‘accountability’ as closely connected to cognition, claiming that the young man understood ‘how these crimes have rocked his entire family’ and ‘what has happened as a consequence’. Here, ‘accountability’ is both cognitive and affective, both internal (the feeling of the emotions) and external (the display of the emotions).

The second vignette presents an entirely different, and much less nuanced, conceptualisation of ‘accountability’. In this case, ‘accountability’ for young offenders is simply equated with increased punishment. The ‘slap on the wrist’ approach that is seen to have fostered a culture in which the Columbine shootings were able to occur is contrasted with the notion of ‘accountability’. In this way, offender ‘accountability’ is closely connected to the rise of the responsibilisation of young people, a key feature of contemporary youth penality (Cunneen, White & Richards 2015).

Importantly, in both of these vignettes, ‘accountability’ is backwards-looking or retrospective. The offenders in question are being held ‘accountable’ for past behaviours. In the third vignette, by contrast, ‘accountability’ is presented as forwards-looking. COSA volunteers are to hold Charlie Taylor ‘accountable’ after he has been released from prison and is no longer under correctional supervision. Importantly, this brand of ‘accountability’ in COSA is infinite. Unlike Magistrate Fryer’s version of ‘accountability’, it does not relate solely or even primarily to past behaviours, but to current cognitions, beliefs and attitudes. Unlike Bill McCollum’s version of ‘accountability’, which translates into harsher punishment, ‘accountability’ in COSA takes place at the completion of a prison term. Here, it is a risk-management strategy rather than punishment per se. In other words, if we accept McCollum’s definition, it occurs after the offender has already been held ‘accountable’ via a prison term. If we were to accept all three versions of ‘accountability’ espoused in these vignettes, an imagined offender would have been held ‘accountable’ during the court process, during his prison sentence, and then ad infinitum as a participant in a COSA. Therefore, while explicit definitions are rare, implicitly, offender ‘accountability’ has numerous, nebulous, competing and conflicting meanings in the criminological literature. It is to the two most common of these that this comment now turns.

Offender ‘accountability’ as punishment

First, as a number of authors have noted, offender ‘accountability’ is often simply equated with punishment in the criminological literature (Calhoun & Pelech 2010; Umbreit 1995). (Indeed, this forms part of the restorative justice critique of the traditional criminal justice process: ‘accountability’ ought to require more from the offender than passive endurance of punishment (see, for example, Luna 2003; Umbreit 1995; Umbreit & Bradshaw 1997; Zehr 1990)). Koss et al (2004, p. 1451) simply substitute the term ‘punishment’ with ‘accountability’ when they state that ‘legal doctrine teaches that accountability must be proportional to the harm caused, not too lenient nor too harsh’. This may be a case of swapping a new buzzword for an established term — although this in itself should be cause for interrogation. Consider also the rationales for sentencing contained in New Zealand’s Sentencing Act 2002 (NZ) (emphasis added):

(a) to hold the offender accountable for harm done to the victim and the community by the offending;

(b) to promote in the offender a sense of responsibility for, and an acknowledgment of, that harm;

(c) to provide for the interests of the victim of the offence;

(d) to provide reparation for harm done by the offending;

(e) to denounce the conduct in which the offender was involved;

(f) to deter the offender or other persons from committing the same or a similar offence;

(g) to protect the community from the offender;

(h) to assist in the offender’s rehabilitation and reintegration.

Here, ‘accountability’ exists alongside the traditional sentencing rationales of rehabilitation, incapacitation, deterrence and denunciation, but in place of retribution, suggesting that for the architects of this legislation, offender ‘accountability’ can be equated with punishment. This is a potentially major shift in thinking about penality that has occurred without comment or critique. (In contrast, in the sentencing legislation of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory (Crimes (Sentencing Procedures) Act 1999 (NSW) s 3A; Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 (ACT) s 7(1)), where the Acts contain identical legislative provisions in this regard, ‘accountability’ intriguingly exists alongside all of the traditional sentencing rationales, including retribution. This suggests that ‘accountability’ and retribution were not synonymous in the minds of these legislators). A key point of this comment is that it is worth examining how ‘accountability’ has come, in some instances at least, to replace retribution.

Offender ‘accountability’ as taking responsibility for offending behaviour

The terms ‘accountability’ and ‘taking responsibility’ are often used interchangeably in some criminological literature. Chung et al. (2006) pepper their discussion of domestic violence perpetrator programs with the phrase ‘accountability and responsibility’ as though these are linked but distinct concepts. Warren and Fraser (2009, p. 35) state that the entry pathway into New Zealand’s Te Hurihanga program is ‘intended to hold the young offender accountable and encourage him to take responsibility’, again as though these are separate but connected. Knaggs et al. (2008, p. 45) even discuss the need for perpetrators of family violence ‘to accept accountability [rather than responsibility] for their behaviour’ (see further Title et al. 2002; Umbreit 1995; Umbreit & Bradshaw 1997; Zehr 1990). This again demonstrates the interchangeable nature of the terms ‘responsibility’ and ‘accountability’ in criminological discourse (see Braithwaite 2006; Braithwaite & Roche 2000).

Although ‘taking responsibility’ or ‘being held responsible’ are among the most common concepts associated with offender ‘accountability’, there is much confusion about responsibility in turn. For example, Knaggs et al. (2008) appear confused about whether ‘accountability’ leads to an acceptance of responsibility, or vice versa. They first posit ‘accountability’ as an objective that is to be met through offenders accepting responsibility for their criminal behaviour: ‘The F[amily] V[iolence] Court seeks to achieve another of its objectives, enhancing accountability, by encouraging defendants to accept responsibility for their offending’ (Knaggs et al. 2008, p. 21). Later, the same authors (2008, p. 22) imagine the opposite relationship between these two concepts: ‘Both FV Courts encourage defendants to accept responsibility by holding them accountable for their offending.’

Elsewhere in the literature, offender ‘accountability’ is constructed as the antithesis of excusing, justifying or denying offending behaviour. Miller et al. (2005, p. 346), for example, contrast ‘accountability’ in the context of domestic violence with the excuses typically given by perpetrators, such as ‘the judge was on her side’ (see also Winder & Gough 2010). Day et al. (2009, p. 183) argue that with male domestic violence perpetrators, ‘any attempt to externalise responsibility can be perceived as an effort to escape being held accountable’ (see also Bledsoe et al. 2006). For Schneider and Wright (2004, p. 4), ‘accountability and offender denial are inversely related’ (see also Levenson 2011).

Making sense of offender ‘accountability’

There are other implicit constructions of offender ‘accountability’ in the criminological literature, including ‘accountability’ as reparation, remorse, compliance and culpability, but space limitations preclude a discussion of these. The above discussion nonetheless provides a preliminary overview of two of the main ways in which it is portrayed, and demonstrates that offender ‘accountability’ is conceptualised in numerous, nebulous ways. These varied conceptualisations raise a number of key questions that might be helpful for criminal justice scholars, legislators, policy-makers and practitioners to consider in interrogating the meaning(s) of this ubiquitous and taken-for-granted concept. The remainder of this comment poses three key questions in this regard.

Is offender ‘accountability’ to be retrospective or prospective?

Overwhelmingly, offender ‘accountability’ is conceptualised retrospectively — as relating to past behaviours. As discussed above, criminal justice legislation and programs around the globe have an increased emphasis on ‘holding offenders accountable’ for past offending behaviour. This is most explicit when ‘accountability’ forms a rationale for sentencing, as discussed above. There are, however, some important departures from this, especially conceptualisations of ‘accountability’ as challenging offenders’ cognitive distortions. According to these conceptualisations, offender ‘accountability’ is prospective, and concerned primarily with offenders’ future behaviour. As noted above, this is undoubtedly and explicitly the case in relation to COSA, which are formed once an offender is released from prison (that is, has already been ‘held accountable’ for his past actions via a prison term), with the explicit future-focused aim of ‘no more victims’ (Fox 2010). Even in the COSA context, however, offender ‘accountability’ is variously understood to be both prospective and retrospective. Recent research on COSA in the United Kingdom found that COSA volunteers variously believed that their ‘accountability’ role related to the offender’s past and future behaviour (Thomas et al. 2014). For example, while one volunteer described ‘accountability’ as ‘that they [offenders] recognise that what they did was wrong ... why people get upset by what they did’, another described it by saying, ‘[We] remind them they are not off the leash altogether’ (cited in Thomas et al. 2014, p. 124). Thus, while offender ‘accountability’ is predominantly portrayed as retrospective, this is not uniformly the case, and it would be beneficial for criminal justice legislators and policy-makers to consider whether they intend for ‘accountability’ measures to be retrospective or prospective (see generally Braithwaite & Roche 2000; Roche 2003).

Is offender ‘accountability’ to be a means to an end or a goal in its own right?

Offender ‘accountability’ is commonly constructed as a goal in and of itself, with legislation, policy and programs increasingly aiming to ‘hold offenders accountable’. This is particularly the case when ‘accountability’ is equated with punishment. Again, however, there are exceptions to this, with ‘accountability’ sometimes represented as a means of attaining some other goal. While these other goals are not often specified, implicitly, ‘accountability’ is represented as a means of assisting crime victims and/or improving community safety through reducing recidivism. Again therefore, it would be beneficial for criminal justice professionals to consider whether ‘accountability’ measures are an aim in their own right, or whether ‘accountability’ is a pathway to some other goal (such as reduced recidivism).

Is ‘accountability’ to be internal or external?

In the restorative justice literature, offender ‘accountability’ is (usually implicitly) conceptualised as an obligation on the part of the offender (for example, Zehr 1990). Crime, according to this narrative, creates an obligation to victims and communities; it is ‘recognition that when an offense occurs, the offender incurs an obligation to the victim. ... [It involves] ... taking action to make things right’ (Umbreit 1995, p. 32; see also Luna 2003). As such, ‘accountability’ denotes something that is to be done by the offender as an act of reparation. In the broader criminological literature, however, ‘accountability’ is often seen as something done to the offender, as is the case when ‘accountability’ is equated with punishment, as discussed above. A consideration of whether offender ‘accountability’ is to be internal or external might thus provide criminal justice professionals increased clarity around this concept.

Conclusion

In discourse and practice, offender ‘accountability’ has emerged as a concept with extraordinary reach and purchase. However, it has received little scholarly attention. Despite this — or perhaps because of it — highly divergent criminal justice measures (including increasingly punitive ones) have been and continue to be legitimised by being constructed in terms of ‘accountability’. It is for this reason that it is vital that, as criminological scholars, we turn our attention to this previously overlooked concept. This comment has sought to encourage this by beginning a critical conversation about the concept.

This preliminary discussion raises a number of questions that future research might address. Chief among these is how offender ‘accountability’ emerged as a taken-for-granted criminal justice discourse. In other words, what are the conditions of existence of this discourse that is so taken-for-granted that it is rendered utterly unproblematic; as Hacking (1995, p. 95) puts it, ‘the sort of thing that nobody even asks about’? Ward and Kupchik (2009) have begun such work by considering the rise of offender ‘accountability’ in the American youth justice system, and drawing connections between the collapse of penal welfarism, the rise of popular punitivism and youth ‘accountability’. While theirs is a useful account, there is much more work to be done. As the above discussion intimates, ‘accountability’ draws on discourses far more varied than those reflective of the neoliberal tendency towards individual responsibilisation. Future research might usefully elucidate some of these, as well as considering how criminal justice professionals mobilise this nebulous concept, and the potential impacts that this may have on offenders, victims and communities.

Case

Giuliana Milner v JN (2013) ACTMC 19 (13 September 2013)

Legislation

Juvenile Offender Accountability and Rehabilitation Act 1999 (US)

Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 (ACT)

Crimes (Sentencing Procedures) Act 1999 (NSW)

Sentencing Act 2002 (NZ)

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^[*] Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, School of Justice, QUT, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane Qld 4001, Australia. Email:

[e-mail].