Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) in Australia, 1995-1999 (ICPSR 2993)

Version Date: Mar 30, 2006

Cite this study |

Principal Investigator(s):
Lawrence W., Sherman, University of Maryland, Australian National University, and University of Pittsburgh; John Braithwaite, University of Maryland, Australian National University, and University of Pittsburgh; Heather Strang, University of Maryland, Australian National University, and University of Pittsburgh; Geoffrey C. Barnes, University of Maryland, Australian National University, and University of Pittsburgh

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02993.v1

Version V1

Slide tabs to view more

Summary

The Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) project compared the effects of standard court processing with the effects of a restorative justice intervention known as conferencing for four kinds of cases: drunk driving (over .08 blood alcohol content) at any age, juvenile property offending with personal victims, juvenile shoplifting offenses detected by store security officers, and youth violent crimes (under age 30). Reintegrative shaming theory underpins the conferencing alternative. It entails offenders facing those harmed by their actions in the presence of family and friends whose opinions they care about, discussing their wrongdoing, and making repayment to society and to their victims for the costs of their crimes, both material and emotional. These conferences were facilitated by police officers and usually took around 90 minutes, compared with around ten minutes for court processing time. The researchers sought to test the hypotheses that (1) there would be less repeat offending after a conference than after a court treatment, (2) victims would be more satisfied with conferences than with court, (3) both offenders and victims would find conferences to be fairer than court, and (4) the public costs of providing a conference would be no greater than, and perhaps less than, the costs of processing offenders in court. This study contains data from ongoing experiments comparing the effects of court versus diversionary conferences for a select group of offenders. Part 1, Administrative Data for All Cases, consists of data from reports by police officers. These data include information on the offender's attitude, the police station and officer that referred the case, blood alcohol content level (drunk driving only), offense type, and RISE assigned treatment. Parts 2-5 are data from observations by trained RISE research staff of court and conference treatments to which offenders had been randomly assigned. Variables for Parts 2-5 include duration of the court or conference, if there was any violence or threat of violence in the court or conference, supports that the offender and victim had, how much reintegrative shaming was expressed, the extent to which the offender accepted guilt, if and in what form the offender apologized (e.g., verbal, handshake, hug, kiss), how defiant or sullen the offender was, how much the offender contributed to the outcome, what the outcome was (e.g., dismissed, imprisonment, fine, community service, bail release, driving license cancelled, counseling program), and what the outcome reflected (punishment, repaying community, repaying victims, preventing future offense, restoration). Data for Parts 6 and 7, Year 0 Survey Data from Non-Drunk-Driving Offenders Assigned to Court and Conferences and Year 0 Survey Data from Drunk-Driving Offenders Assigned to Court and Conferences, were taken from interviews with offenders by trained RISE interview staff after the court or conference proceedings. Variables for Parts 6 and 7 include how much the court or conference respected the respondent's rights, how much influence the respondent had over the agreement, the outcome that the respondent received, if the court or conference solved any problems, if police explained that the respondent had the right to refuse the court or conference, if the respondent was consulted about whom to invite to court or conference, how the respondent was treated, and if the respondent's respect for the justice system had gone up or down as a result of the court or conference. Additional variables focused on how nervous the respondent was about attending the court or conference, how severe the respondent felt the outcome was, how severe the respondent thought the punishment would be if he/she were caught again, if the respondent thought the court or conference would prevent him/her from breaking the law, if the respondent was bitter about the way he/she was treated, if the respondent understood what was going on in the court or conference, if the court or conference took account of what the respondent said, if the respondent felt pushed around by people with more power, if the respondent felt disadvantaged because of race, sex, age, or income, how police treated the respondent when arrested, if the respondent regretted what he/she did, if the respondent felt ashamed of what he/she did, what his/her family, friends, and other people thought of what the respondent did, and if the respondent had used drugs or alcohol the past year. Demographic variables in this data collection include offender's country of birth, gender, race, education, income, and employment.

Citation

Sherman, Lawrence W., Braithwaite, John, Strang, Heather, and Barnes, Geoffrey C. Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) in Australia, 1995-1999. [distributor], 2006-03-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02993.v1

Export Citation:

  • RIS (generic format for RefWorks, EndNote, etc.)
  • EndNote

Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (98-IJ-CX-0033)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

Hide

Time Period(s)

1995 -- 1999

Date of Collection

1995 -- 1999

Data Collection Notes

  1. A user guide, a codebook, and data collection instruments are provided by ICPSR as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR Web site.

Hide

Study Purpose

The Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) project compared the effects of standard court processing with the effects of a restorative justice intervention known as conferencing for four kinds of cases: drunk driving (over .08 blood alcohol content) at any age, juvenile property offending with personal victims, juvenile shoplifting offenses detected by store security officers, and youth violent crimes (under age 30). Reintegrative shaming theory underpins the conferencing alternative. It entails offenders facing those harmed by their actions in the presence of family and friends whose opinions they care about, discussing their wrongdoing, and making repayment to society and to their victims for the costs of their crimes, both material and emotional. These conferences were facilitated by police officers and usually took around 90 minutes, compared with around ten minutes for court processing time. The researchers sought to test the hypotheses that (1) there would be less repeat offending after a conference than after a court treatment, (2) victims would be more satisfied with conferences than with court (3) both offenders and victims would find conferences to be fairer than court, and (4) the public costs of providing a conference would be no greater than, and perhaps less than, the costs of processing offenders in court.

Study Design

This study contains data from ongoing experiments comparing the effects of court and conferences for a select group of offenders. Because the aim of the research was to compare cases that were assigned to court with equally serious cases that were assigned to conference, a case could be accepted into the experiments only if it would normally be dealt with by a court. The research protocol also required, however, that eligible cases not be so serious that in the estimation of the apprehending police officer they could only be dealt with in court. Thus, the aim of the research team was to include in the experiment "middle-range" offenses, neither so trivial that they would normally be dealt with by a simple caution or warning, nor so serious that police would be reluctant to bypass the court system in favor of an experimental alternative. Additional eligibility requirements for drunk-driving cases were: (a) the offender's blood alcohol content (BAC) was over .08 at the time of the incident, (b) the offense didn't involve an accident, (c) the offender was not a police officer, and (d) the offender was eligible for VATAC (Voluntary Agreement to Attend Court). Eligible offenders for juvenile personal property and juvenile property security offenses had to be under 18 years old and violent crime offenders had to be under 30 years old. Cases were sent to RISE from officers throughout the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) region. This included uniformed patrol officers from each of the four Canberra police stations and its special "City Beat" office in the center of the city, and also from the Traffic Division and the Crime Branch. Just prior to the commencement of data collection, almost every constable and sergeant in the region underwent a day-long information and training session with RISE staff and was provided with guidance on case eligibility and the procedure for referring matters into RISE. When police officers had a matter that they believed was RISE-eligible, they called a 24-hour mobile phone number that was permanently in the custody of one member of the research team. Officers were then asked a series of ten screening questions to verify the eligibility of the case. Once case details were entered into a log, an envelope containing the random assignment (court or conference) was opened and the officer was informed of the recommended disposition immediately. After being informed of the randomly assigned treatment (court or conference) for each case by the RISE staffer, the apprehending officer then processed the case accordingly. Victim data were limited to the juvenile personal property and youth violence experiments. No drunk-driving offenses included direct victims, so consequently there were no drunk-driving data on victims. Files were created consisting of data from reports by police officers (Part 1), data from observations by trained RISE research staff of court and conference treatments to which offenders had been randomly assigned (Parts 2-5), and data from interviews with offenders by trained RISE interview staff after the court or conference proceedings (Parts 6 and 7).

Sample

Random sampling.

Universe

Individuals who committed offenses of drunk driving over .08 blood alcohol content at any age, juvenile property offending with personal victims, juvenile shoplifting offenses detected by store security officers, and youth violent crimes (under age 30) in the Australian Capital Territory.

Data Source

administrative records, observations, and personal interviews

Data Type(s)

Description of Variables

Part 1, Administrative Data for All Cases, consists of data from reports by police officers. These data include information on the offender's attitude, the police station and officer, that referred the case, blood alcohol content level (drunk driving only), offense type, and RISE assigned treatment. Parts 2-5 are data from observations by trained RISE research staff of court and conference treatments to which offenders had been randomly assigned. Variables for Parts 2-5 include duration of the court or conference, if there was any violence or threat of violence in court or conference, supports that the offender and victim had, how much reintegrative shaming was expressed, the extent to which the offender accepted guilt, if and in what form the offender apologized (e.g., verbal, handshake, hug, kiss), how defiant or sullen the offender was, how much the offender contributed to the outcome, what the outcome was (e.g., dismissed, imprisonment, fine, community service, bail release, driving license, cancelled counseling program), and what the outcome reflected (punishment, repaying community, repaying victims, preventing future offense, restoration). Data for Parts 6 and 7, were taken from interviews with offenders by trained RISE interview staff after the court or conference proceedings. Variables for Parts 6 and 7 include how much the court or conference respected the respondent's rights, how much influence the respondent had over the agreement, the outcome that the respondent received, if the court or conference solved any problems, if police explained that the respondent had the right to refuse the court or conference, if the respondent was consulted about whom to invite to court or conference, how the respondent was treated, and if the respondent's respect for the justice system had gone up or down as a result of the court or conference. Additional variables focused on how nervous the respondent was about attending the court or conference, how severe the respondent felt the outcome was, how severe the respondent thought the punishment would be if he/she were caught again, if the respondent thought the court or conference would prevent him/her from breaking the law, if the respondent was bitter about the way he/she was treated, if the respondent understood what was going on in the court or conference, if the court or conference took account of what the respondent said, if the respondent felt pushed around by people with more power, if the respondent felt disadvantaged because of race, sex, age, or income, how police treated the respondent when arrested, if the respondent regretted what he/she did, if the respondent felt ashamed of what he/she did, what his/her family, friends, and other people thought of what the respondent did, and if the respondent had used drugs or alcohol the past year. Demographic variables in this data collection include offender's country of birth, gender, race, education, income, and employment.

Response Rates

The findings from court and conference observations (Parts 2-5) are based upon the completion of at least one independent observation report for 86 percent of drunk-driving offenders, 66 percent of juvenile personal property offenders, 75 percent of juvenile property security offenders, and 68 percent of youth violent crime offenders. The findings from offender interviews (Parts 6 and 7) are based upon completion rates of 85 percent for drunk-driving offenders, 76 percent of juvenile personal property offenders, 73 percent of juvenile property security offenders, and 72 percent of youth violent crime offenders.

Presence of Common Scales

Several Likert-type scales were used.

Hide

Original Release Date

2001-06-18

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Sherman, Lawrence W., John Braithwaite, Heather Strang, and Geoffrey C. Barnes. REINTEGRATIVE SHAMING EXPERIMENTS (RISE) IN AUSTRALIA, 1995-1999. ICPSR version. College Park, MD: University of Maryland [producer], 2000. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2001. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02993.v1

2006-03-30 File UG2993.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

2006-03-30 File CQ2993.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.

2001-06-18 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Standardized missing values.
  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Hide

Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.