End Notes - The Sex Offender as a Scapegoat    - [Article]

1 John Kastner, produced this hour long documentary for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) program Witness. It was first aired in January 1997.

2 Vern Redekop's Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice (1993) is a sustained application of Girard's scapegoating theories to criminal justice systems.

3 Timothy Gorringe's God's Just Vengeance (1996) treats this theme well. Also see Allard and Northey (forthcoming) and Northey (1998).

4 The person's name has been changed.

5 A massive body of literature has grown up in the past few years. The best study to date specifically on the topic is Restoring Justice (Strong and Van Ness, 1997). The best overview of the wider context is The Expanding Prison (Cayley, 1998). The first major study was Changing Lenses (Zehr, 1990) - considered a classic. An excellent annotated bibliography has also recently been produced (McCold, 1997).

6 See a fuller account in Dean Peachey's "The Kitchener Experiment" (1989).

7 We are drawing on the work of Berman (1983/1997), Strong and Van Ness (1997), and of course René Girard, whose works we will not list here.

8 John Haley is the expert on this. Of his many publications, see for instance Haley (1989).

9 Nils Christie writes: "The victim in a criminal case is a sort of double loser in our society... He is excluded from any participation in his own conflict. His conflict is stolen by the state, a theft which in particular is carried out by professionals (1981, p. 93)." He draws upon an earlier classic essay he wrote entitled "Conflicts as property" (1977). Christie's book and article are rewarding reading!

10 Herman Bianchi explicates this in Justice as Sanctuary (1994).

11 Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Modern Prison (1978) demonstrates this well.

12 The classic book on this idea is Braithwaite (1989).

13 The guiding principles of Circles are set out in Heise et al (1995). They include:

We believe in a loving and reconciling God who calls us to be agents of God's healing work in the world.
We recognize the humanity of both the victim and offender.
We acknowledge the ongoing pain and the need for healing for victims of sexual abuse.
We welcome the offender into community and accountability.
We seek to prevent further victimization both through reducing recidivism by offenders and increasing public awareness in the wider community.
We accept God's call to radical hospitality, sharing our lives with one another in community and risking in the service of love. (pp. 11-12)

14 This category of release from Canadian prisons emerged in legislation a decade ago in response to increasing public pressure to not release offenders considered high risk on any form of conditional release or parole. The result was the 'detention' of such offenders until the last day that they could be legally held in custody, or their warrant expiry date.

15 See Yantzi, 1998, p. 47 for a discussion of this.

16 An established pattern of offending that is unique to each offender, can be identified by certain triggers that lead into a cycle that can end in re-offense.

17 "The almond shaped segment that is made when two circles overlap...the mandorla begins the healing of the split..(it is) a prototype of conflict resolution, it is the art of healing", Robert A. Johnson (1991), Owning Your Own Shadow.

18 John McKendy (1998) develops the concept of dialogue in light of his personal experience with the Alternatives to Violence Program in prisons. He speaks of the significance of the recovery of personal narrative in the healing dialogue with prisoners.

19 Parker Palmer (1996) speaks of the significance of the stranger in these terms:

"The viewpoint of the stranger not only affords a fuller look at the outer world; it also
gives us a deeper look at ourselves. For the stranger represents possibilities in our own
lives which we want to avoid facing...We do not want to confront the prisoner because
we know our own crimes. We avoid the stranger because he or she reminds us of our
precarious place on earth, reminds us that we are strangers to others. . .  And we are strangers to ourselves as well.", p.66.