Restorative Justice Conferencing in Response to Pollution Offending : A Vehicle for the Achievement of Justice as Meaningful Involvement

Download files
Access & Terms of Use
open access
Embargoed until 2021-03-04
Copyright: Hamilton, Mark
Altmetric
Abstract
Simply defined, restorative justice conferencing is a facilitated dialogue between relevant stakeholders to an offence. This dissertation explores the applicability of such conferencing as part of the prosecution of pollution offending in New South Wales, Australia (and by extension, comparable jurisdictions). Analysis of 175 Land and Environment Court pollution offending judgments, coupled with interviews with those involved in the prosecution of such offending, reveals that prosecution achieves a binary conceptualisation of justice; justice as procedure and justice as outcome. This binary conceptualisation of justice is being achieved with minimal to no offender and victim input, voice and interaction. Drawing on approaches within green criminology a further conceptualisation of justice was formulated. That being justice as meaningful involvement, which recognises the wide range of victims of pollution offending and seeks inclusion of those victims in the aftermath of crime to ensure the continued functioning of those victims. Justice as meaningful involvement is the antithesis of the minimal to no offender and victim input, voice and interaction afforded by prosecution of pollution offending. Interviews and a documentary analysis of restorative justice conferencing in an Aboriginal cultural heritage context in New South Wales, Australia, and a New Zealand environment and planning offending context demonstrates when and how restorative justice conferencing can achieve justice as meaningful involvement without displacing justice as procedure and justice as outcome. This dissertation adds to the existing literature on the use of restorative justice conferencing in an environmental and planning offending context, and, Aboriginal cultural heritage offending context. Its originality is in the proffering of such conferencing as a vehicle through which to achieve justice as meaningful involvement.
Persistent link to this record
Link to Publisher Version
Link to Open Access Version
Additional Link
Author(s)
Hamilton, Mark
Supervisor(s)
Holley, Cameron
Bolitho, Jane
Creator(s)
Editor(s)
Translator(s)
Curator(s)
Designer(s)
Arranger(s)
Composer(s)
Recordist(s)
Conference Proceedings Editor(s)
Other Contributor(s)
Corporate/Industry Contributor(s)
Publication Year
2019
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
PhD Doctorate
UNSW Faculty
Files
download public version.pdf 4.8 MB Adobe Portable Document Format
Related dataset(s)