European Picture of Empathy and Restorative Justice by Tim Chapman


Tim Chapman

• University of Ulster, Sociology and Applied Social Studies, Faculty Member

• I organise and teach on the University of Ulster restorative practices programme which includes accredited courses at Certificate, Diploma and Masters levels. I am also involved in important European research projects into community restorative restorative justice and into the training of legal professionals in restorative justice.

• academia.edu

• Linked-in

• Faculty Page - University of Ulster

• Empathy one of those words that you take for granted.

• More questions that came up

• Do we learn empathy or do we block it out?

• harm not caused by lack of empathy but sustained by it.

• Story of robbers who used fear and intimidation to scare people..

• need to be aggressive and abusive when robbing, it they were more empathic they couldn't have been good robbers

• need to scare people so they do what you tell them to do

• put your empathy to one side

• need to put your empathy aside for

  • robbery

  • soldiers - don't' want to kill

  • doctors - can't make a decision or will burn out

• 9:30 when is empathy necessary?

• can be dangerous?

• friend was sick with cancer, his social workers friends didn't' respond well

• We want you to make the effort to understand us. 

• understand us not make us try to understand what you want us to do

• 13:00 European? the question of context

• people have different perspectives

• Most RJ work is in  Finland and Belgium

• identity issues

• 22:00 main work in empathy is American and English

• 23:00 - history of RJ

• empathy and RJ in different cultures

  • UK - very much in to measurements

  • expert practitioners approach

  • human rights approach

• 30:00 seen through different lens

  • RJ about feeling

  • about social lens

  • issues of RJ and fairness

  • RJ as a social process

• 44:00 Role of Empathy in RJ

  • if people see an empathic facilitator it helps

  • catharsis vr action to change.

  • antidote to shame is empathy

  • antidote to any horrible feeling is empathy

  • he sees action as the factor that is more important

• If harm creates victim

  • fear    then need is for safety

  • anger    then need is for Justice

  • anxiety    then need is for control

  • shame    then need is for  respect

  • empathy is not their need, empathy is maybe a vehicle for communicating, but it doesn't meet the need

• offender and victim have the same needs and it's the facilitator has  to understand the needs so the design solution,

• empathy may create the connection

• empathy can be an enabler, can be a disabler. It is a product of dialog. if people talk with each other they are more likely to be empathic

• facilitator doesn't go in and say they want to create empathy, it will upset the autonomy

• he wants a culture of justice, respect, equity

• what is the purpose of justice?

• thin empathy: system looking for looks good, manage by experts

  • fear that's the way RJ is going

• thick empathy:

  • about communication

  • listening and dialog, decide what I'm sorry for

  • can feel bad at the end of a conference