Rethinking Drug Courts: Restorative Justice as a Response to Racial Injustice
Rethinking Drug Courts: Restorative Justice as a Response to Racial Injustice
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重新思考毒品法庭：恢复性司法作为对种族不公正的回应
DOI：
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发表时间：
2009
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Michael M. O’Hear
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文献类型：
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作者：
Michael M. O’Hear
专门的戒毒治疗法庭已成为“禁毒战争”中更惩罚性做法的一种受欢迎的替代办法，目前在美国各地设立了近2，000个此类法庭。他们的吸引力的一个来源是相信他们将改善国家监狱人口中巨大的种族差异--这种差异在很大程度上是由于传统刑事法庭对一些毒品犯罪判处的长期徒刑造成的。然而，经验表明，毒品法庭不是一种“无害”的创新。与传统的法庭程序相比，毒品法庭既可以产生赢家，也可以产生输家，而且有充分的理由怀疑，黑人被告从毒品法庭的实施中受益的可能性要比白色被告小得多。因此，毒品法庭实际上可能会加剧而不是改善毒品犯罪监禁率的种族差异。因此，市中心少数民族社区对禁毒战争的担忧可能会通过另一种创新得到更好的解决：针对毒品罪犯的专门恢复性司法计划。虽然治疗可能是这种方案的一部分，但真实的核心是“社区会议”过程，其中包括毒品罪犯和社区代表的调解对话和集体解决问题。在药物治疗法庭给予刑事司法和治疗专业人员主导地位的地方，社区会议的方法赋予非专业社区代表权力，从而能够解决与毒品战争有关的内城少数民族社区的一些社会资本赤字。
Specialized drug treatment courts have become a popular alternative to more punitive approaches to the "war on drugs," with nearly 2,000 such courts now established across the United States. One source of their appeal is the belief that they will ameliorate the dramatic racial disparities in the nation's prison population - disparities that result in large measure from the long sentences handed out for some drug crimes in conventional criminal courts. However, experience has shown that drug courts are not a "do-no-harm" innovation. Drug courts can produce both winners and losers when compared to conventional court processing, and there are good reasons to suspect that black defendants are considerably less likely to benefit from the implementation of a drug court than white defendants. As a result, drug courts may actually exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, racial disparities in the incarceration rate for drug crimes. Thus, the concerns of inner-city minority communities with the war on drugs may be better addressed through a different sort of innovation: a specialized restorative justice program for drug offenders. Although treatment may be part of such a program, the real centerpiece is the "community conferencing" process, which involves mediated dialogue and collective problem-solving involving drug offenders and community representatives. Where the drug treatment court gives a dominant role to criminal justice and therapeutic professionals, the community conferencing approach empowers lay community representatives, and is thereby capable of addressing some of the social capital deficits in inner-city minority communities that are associated with the war on drugs.