Accountability beyond punishment: definitions and expressions
Restorative and transformative justice, among other paradigms and lineages, have offered counters to punitive justice including the concept and practice of accountability. The term accountability has been offered as both a conceptual and practical approach to addressing interpersonal violence and ha...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Contemporary justice review
Year: 2025, Volume: 28, Issue: 2, Pages: 133-156 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | Restorative and transformative justice, among other paradigms and lineages, have offered counters to punitive justice including the concept and practice of accountability. The term accountability has been offered as both a conceptual and practical approach to addressing interpersonal violence and harm more broadly, focusing on the needs of survivors and the transformation of people who have caused harm. There has been limited scholarship exploring what accountability is, and how it is expressed, in particular from the experiences and perspectives of people who have caused harm. Using a critical and interpretive phenomenological approach, this study interviewed 11 men who committed homicide, served long sentences in prison, participated in a restorative process while incarcerated, and have since come home. Participants in the study were asked how they defined accountability in the context of their offense, and how they believe they expressed accountability. The study found that participants’ definitions and expressions of accountability largely aligned with existing literature and affirmed two important ideas that to date have been marginal in discourse and scholarship. This included that most informants reported accountability was a process that took time, and that individual agency was critical to their accountability-taking. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-2248 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/10282580.2025.2518104 |
