Occasional Offender
It means having an understanding of the depth of the pain and the grief they have caused.
Restorative Justice for Offenders in crimes of severe violence begins with Offenders being willing to acknowledge and understand — and take personal responsibility for – the choices they made and the behaviors they engaged in to create the terrible harms and devastations they caused. This means being willing to face and feel personal responsibility for those choices, actions, and behaviors. It means comprehending the depth of the pain and suffering they caused, and understanding something about how they came to be capable of such choices. It means having the courage to face whatever the Victim/Survivor wants and needs to convey to the Offender in a dialogue, and it means being willing to express remorse (if they have the capacity) for the effects of those choices upon the Victims/Survivors. RJ for Offenders is not merely about apology, especially for things that can never be restored or made whole again. And it is not about being forgiven — unless Victims/Survivors feel fully ready within themselves to freely offer that forgiveness at some point during the VOD itself. It is about Accountability.
- A chronic offender is an individual who persistently and consistently breaks the law for a long period of time. The types of crimes most commonly associated with a chronic offender are property.
- Offender treatment working with, rather than against, denial in sex offender treatment and management brent borg, msw acting program manager sex offender treatment and assessment program (sotap) airway heights corrections center washington state department of corrections brborg@doc1.wa.gov.
While RJ is often thought of as providing Offenders with a chance to apologize in person to their Victims/Survivors, there are many Victims/Survivors who do not want an apology — at least not until the Offenders understand a lot more about what they are apologizing for. These survivors do not want the Offenders in their cases to get away with what they feel is the “cheap grace” of apology. For it is only with a true understanding of how profoundly victims and their survivors have been wounded, and what the survivors continue to live with every day, that Offenders can begin to comprehend what apology can and cannot be. After all, it is completely impossible to “get over” the loss of a loved one to murder, or the loss of one’s innocence and sense of trust and safety to sexual assault or other intimate betrayal and violation. This is why RJ must be fundamentally and rigorously Victim-Centered if it is to be truly effective.
For most Victims/Survivors this means making the Offender understand not only what s/he did to the victim(s), but the continuing and persistently profound after-effects of what s/he did. When a loved one has been murdered, or when one’s innocence has been shattered by sexual assault or other violation, nothing can be done to “pay back” the life, or the innocence lost, or the trauma and continuing post-traumatic symptoms endured. This is why RJ for Offenders can never be merely a matter of simply summoning the courage — as hard as that may be — to express an apology to a Victim/Survivor, regardless of its sincerity. Because until the Victim/Survivor is certain that the Offender comprehends thoroughly what s/he has actually done, it cannot have the meaning necessary. Some Offenders can begin to substantially infer this understanding through in-prison victim impact panels and victim awareness classes; others may only comprehend it by hearing from, or personally experiencing, a facilitated meeting or dialogue with the person(s) s/he victimized. Still others — a relative few — may end up being unable to comprehend these impacts at all. But even this hard realization can help “explain” some things for Victims/Survivors, as “explanations” are what so many seek from VOD.
For Offenders, finding ways of expressing accountability when not a single thing can be said or done to “repay” the loss, and when words are so terribly insufficient, may seem impossible. But even mere words, when informed by new understandings, can serve to help and heal when they are authentic. And while many RJ theorists and practitioners would like to see RJ initiatives — writing apology letters, for example, or requesting a VOD — originating uninvited from offenders, this is not what Victims/Survivors want. The urge to express remorse and apology may be sincere and heartfelt, but only Victims/Survivors themselves can tell Offenders exactly how much what happened has affected them, and they are the ones who need and deserve to be in control of when — and even whether — to receive or accept an apology from an Offender, or whether to consider initiating a VOD. This is the very heart of Victim-Centered RJ.
The occasional criminal only performs the act if the opportunity occurs in his/her routine of daily life. Someone is walking by a car & it happens to be unlocked & the person notices they. Offenders we find a weak type, the person who yields oice to some temptation to commit a criminal act and regrets it ever afterward, and also a strong type, the criminal by passion, the good citizen who, under stress of some great wrong, takes the law into his own hands to redress his grievances. However, these approaches were often limited to occasional sessions in a classroom setting. To give offenders the best chance at successful reintegration, the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) developed a reentry program called the Cognitive Community model where offenders live together in a structured and supportive community.
There are many RJ practitioners who believe that all Victims “should” meet with the Offenders in a “mediation” or “reconciliation.” But the words themselves, and the lack of understanding behind them, can be deeply wounding to victims, as they suggest that the matter is merely a “misunderstanding” to be resolved or reconciled. Victimization, violation, loss, and trauma are not misunderstandings. They are vastly more complex, and victims deserve to know clearly — by having it understood and acknowledged — not only what happened to them, but that they were in no way responsible for what happened. The Offenders were responsible, and the choices they made were theirs alone. When Offenders become unambiguously clear about this, the process of restoring a sense of justice for Victims/Survivors may be able to begin again.
Restorative Justice is also often seen as requiring a face-to-face meeting between the Victim/Survivor and the Offender. But this is not always necessary — and it’s certainly not always wanted by the Victim/Survivor. This is why Victim-Centered RJ must be defined first by each Victim/Survivor’s needs – not the needs of the Offender, or of any external religious imperative, or of a Judge, or of society at large. Victimization is deeply personal. And it’s as personal for Offenders as it is for Victims/Survivors.
In crimes of severe violence, RJ practices are intended to have no direct effect or bearing upon an Offender’s sentence, classification, or release date. And yet ironically, it is within the context of reaching a truly personal understanding of accountability that Offenders convicted of severely violent crimes can actually begin to see that making “meaning,” going forward, from what they did in the past can be well worth changing their attitudes, their behaviors, and their lives for – even while still incarcerated. And while extensive data on Offender recidivism in cases where VOD has been applied are limited by the relatively small percentage, nationwide, of VOD cases completed in crimes of severe violence during the past two decades, there are other indicators relating to institutional behaviors following VOD that suggest that criminal thinking, one of the more entrenched criminogenic needs, can be moderated. This shows how a self-actualized commitment to change can be ignited within them, and it is here that the truly transformative potential of Victim-Centered Restorative Justice for Offenders resides.
Restorative Justice is not a matter of “cheap grace,” or “cumbayah,” neither of which does a thing to fundamentally engage an Offender’s desire to change his thinking and behaviors. It is being held to personal account by the Victim/Survivor — in very real and unflinching ways — that enables the Offender to understand what it feels like to answer to the true authority — the Victim/Survivor. Not the Prosecutor, not the Judge or the Jury, not the Warden or the Correctional Officers — but the Victim/Survivor. That is responsibility at its most personal, and Victim-Centered Restorative Justice is one powerful pathway to this kind of accountability.
Categorizing offenders into occasional, conventional and professional criminals highlights the psychological aspect of criminal orientation, socioeconomic factors, criminal tendencies and the deterrent effectiveness of penalties imposed on various types of criminals. The illustration that the perpetrators of most occasional property crimes are people form well-off backgrounds raises questions on the factors that motivate shoplifting, forgery and vandalism. Considering that wealthy individuals such as Winona Ryder and Claude Allen have suffered charges of shoplifting, it seems that the perpetrators of occasional property crimes engage in the vice largely to satisfy their curiosity and urge for adventure. When someone shoplifts goods about 5,000 dollars of goods, yet his salary is about 160, 000 dollars, the idea of a crime driven by necessity become unacceptable. The role of factors such as poverty and lack of education is not evident among most of the occasional property criminals. Occasional property criminals act impulsively with little a planning on the intended crime unlike other categories of criminals. It is interesting that the perpetrators of occasional property crimes do not regard themselves as criminals but people who take advantage of poor security systems. The infrequency of the acts of an occasional property criminal means that, they are unlikely to continue with the errant behavior once apprehended. An analysis of conventional property crimes shows a pattern and reasonable amount of planning by the perpetrators of such crimes. Material and monetary gains constitute the central aspects of conventional property crimes, which act as a source of livelihood for the offenders. Conventional criminals regard acts such as burglary and motor vehicle theft as an occupation and often associate with other groups of criminals unlike the occasional criminals. For example, the Flatbush Pulley Gang operated in groups of between 15-30 men for purposes of coordination and time efficiency.
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The criminal profiles of incarcerated conventional property criminals show an aspect of internalization and acceptance of crime especially among older adults. Most conventional criminals are able to overcome the threats of arrest and view having a criminal record as a good thing on the streets. Poverty, drug use and lack of education greatly influence an individual’s tendency to engage in conventional property crimes with most of the offenders regarding their activities as a means of survival. Conventional crimes offer an opportunity for acquisition of skills and knowledge required in professional crime. The mode of operation for professional criminals ensures that they can steal a lot and for long without arrest. Meticulous planning and precision are crucial for professional criminals because their activities require the breach of security systems to reach the target without arousing any public attention. The rewards for professional criminals are numerous, and a series of successful criminal undertakings earns them respectable status in the criminal world. Professional criminals rely on nonviolent and systematic skills to achieve their objectives unlike the conventional property criminals. For example, pyramid schemes rely on the gullibility of people and only require the criminal to convince his targets of a reasonably high interest on the deposited amount. It is interesting to realize the influence of varying perceptions about who deserves the label of a criminal on the tendencies of some people to turn crime into an occupation. It seems that the tendencies of criminals vary based on their social status, psychological conviction, nature of a crime and approaches used in committing the crime.