Relational Justice
Where there is a cry for justice, there is a broken relationship. Doing justice means paying attention to the relationships damaged by crime.
Relational Justice is about putting relationships at the heart of the criminal justice system; all the way from crime prevention and policing to sentencing, incarceration and probation. It asks the relational question: “What will be the likely impact of this or that policy, of this or that change, on the quality of relationships within the criminal justice process?” The relational question is a sensible one to ask besides (but not instead of) “what works?”, “what is measurable?”, or “how much value for how much money?” It is also an important question because justice is transformative and not a static state. Doing justice means making room for change, growth and the possibility of restored relationships. Punishing with justice requires that we ask the relational question. When we fail to do so, punishment loses its legitimacy and its moral authority.
Featured by the Guardian, this influential book contains contributions ranging from Professor Anthony Bottoms (Emeritus Wolfson Professor of Criminology and Former Director of the Cambridge University Institute of Criminology) to Andrew Coyle (Emeritus Professor of Prison Studies at the University of London.)
Relational Justice was the launch project of the Relationships Foundation
https://relationshipsfoundation.org/portfolio/relational-justice/
Following on from the Relational Justice project, I worked with the Relationships Foundation and the Scottish Prison Service to develop the Relationships Foundation’s first relational audit tools. These have since been applied in healthcare, business and schools. The Relational Justice project proved to be a highly successful adjunct to the main work of that organization and included a regular Relational Justice Bulletin which I edited for a number of years.
Download back issues of the Relational Justice Bulletin [present neatly in some kind of grid format or otherwise so that the front page and contents sidebar can be clearly seen.
My work on Relational Justice is a companion piece to my work on biblical law because biblical law is the prime example of a coherent, relationships-centred vision of justice that is rooted in how people, God, and community are meant to relate. To that extent, Relational Justice can be seen as one aspect of how I think biblical law can be applied in a contemporary context, as well as in a controversial area of public policy.
I have argued elsewhere that biblical law is fundamentally relational and is concerned with repairing, restoring, and safeguarding right relationships. This means that instead of trying to classify biblical laws in terms of modern categories (whether “civil,” “criminal,” or “moral”), it goes with better with the grain of the laws themselves, and their mode of presentation, to read them through patterns of relationship. In the case of biblical law, these key relationship include: (1) God – person; (2) person – person; (3) community – person; (4) community – land and (5) victim – offender.
This reframing shifts the centre of gravity away from “What rule was broken?” to “Which relationships are damaged, and how can they be set right?” This relational framework – which is native to the biblical text itself – was central to developing the ideas contained in Relational Justice (and I developed this more fully in my subsequent work The Signs of Sin.
Relational Justice seeks to connect biblical jurisprudence meaningfully to modern penology by grounding justice in covenant identity rather than contractual autonomy.
Similarly, I have argued elsewhere that biblical sanctions functioned as relational tools and not merely as punishments for their own sake. This is because punishment in the Bible is characterised by its morally communicative purpose. The nature of the penalty often aims to send a particular message to the offender (and to everyone else) as to what makes the prohibited act morally wrongful. Frequently this means there is an element of poetic justice in the penalty. This is, of course, a hallmark of divine justice generally. As part of this overall approach to punishment, biblical penalties often aim to restore balance between persons; to restore offenders to community and to restore holiness in relation to God.
All of this challenges the widespread and reductive assumption that biblical law purely embodies retribution. Instead, and even in its most retributive aspects, biblical sanctions are relational mechanisms that are intended to repair covenantal life. Most obviously, as has been shown by David Daube, the lex talionis (“eye for eye”) is not only to be understood retributively but as a proportionate penalty that prevents the escalation of further harm and, in the case of the “life for life” formulation, involves the substitution of a live animal for a dead one (i.e. restoration). I explore some of these issues in Retribution and restoration in biblical texts.
All of this contributes significantly to contemporary restorative justice discussions, as well as to the ideas in Relational Justice.
Relational Justice is also indebted to the conviction that justice in the Bible is structured by covenant, not contract. Covenant creates a different kind of relational logic because it means, among other things, that duties are grounded in identity and belonging, not mutual self-interest; the community bears responsibility for protecting the vulnerable and that wrongs threaten social and theological order, not just individual rights. In this way Relational Justice provides a conceptual alternative to modern liberal legal frameworks that prioritise autonomy over relational interdependence.
In this way, Relational Justice bridges biblical law with contemporary criminology and restorative justice. As one of the few scholars in biblical law with professional experience working inside modern justice systems (including HM Prison Service and the Home Office, see Faith-based prison units) I have sought to bring biblical insights into dialogue with restorative justice practice, victim-offender mediation and desistance studies.
In Three Intersections in Criminology and Public Theology I also seek to apply these to criminological theory. These attempts at integration are not simply at the level of comparison but of translation. I try to show how relational ideas in the Bible can illuminate and challenge modern justice frameworks, without collapsing the two together or engaging in simplistic “biblical law for today” arguments. In Justice, Seriousness and Relationships I try to demonstrate the compatibility of relational and biblical thinking about justice regarding the question of “seriousness of offence.”
In sum, Relational Justice seeks to connect biblical jurisprudence meaningfully to modern penology by grounding justice in covenant identity rather than contractual autonomy. It is inspired by the fact that relationships, and not simply rules, are the central element of biblical justice and that biblical sanctions are essentially relational repair mechanisms which, in turn, can be seen as part of a morally communicative penology. In these ways, biblical law can be viewed as a relational vision of justice that remains deeply relevant to modern jurisprudence, criminological theory and contemporary penal practice.