13 - The Restorative Gaze
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2021
Summary
Introduction
Jon watches CCTV footage of petty vandalism targeted at a local corner shop. The recording lasts barely a few minutes and Jon concludes that his best interests will be served if he agrees that these are images of him. The surveillance gaze in which Jon has been caught might follow him through the retributive criminal justice process. However, the assessment of his eligibility, such as previous record and absence of intimidation, place him below the boundary of those deemed not suitable (in other words, too risky) for a restorative justice conference. Alice, the owner of the corner shop, was initially reluctant to participate; she knows her area of town has a bad reputation and the statistics frighten her. However, Alice is willing to embrace her fear and give Jon a chance to listen. Jon is under a restorative gaze.
Surveillance is a dimension of restorative justice but, as this chapter will demonstrate, not limited to evidence gathering. Strategies of gathering and analysing personal information feature at many points during a restorative justice process. Furthermore, the participants in, and promoters of, restorative justice processes are themselves shaped by cultures of surveillance in everyday life. This chapter makes an original contribution by bringing together two discourses and practices: surveillance and restorative justice, and framing the intersection as the restorative gaze. For this first time a theological perspective on surveillance is deployed as a critical tool in the context of restorative justice. The proposed theological paradigm challenges a traditional framing of watching and being watched. Instead of motifs of supervision from on high, this chapter draws on the notion of surveillance from the cross. Cruciform surveillance privileges solidarity with all under unjust and discriminatory surveillance. The Jesus who watches the world in self-giving love models a paradigm for practising surveillance that turns traditional models through 90 degrees. Cruciform surveillance differs from that suggested by the iconography of Christ, the glorified judge/emperor; Christ pantocrator as he is portrayed in the apse of a basilica. Such an image of the divine gaze too readily lends support to patriarchal and kyriarchal models of oppressive watching which, in turn, underpin retributive modes of justice. In distinction, surveillance from the cross offers a lens shaped by servanthood, friendship and agape as self-giving, unconditional love.
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- Criminology and Public TheologyOn Hope, Mercy and Restoration, pp. 295 - 318Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020