Source: (-0001) Journal of Social Work Practice (Volume 21) Issue 3:Pages347-359
Re-integrative shaming has been a central, but by no means uncontroversial principle of
restorative practices within the youth justice system. This paper draws on video data from
a creative writing project with young offenders in the context of individuated restorative
justice programmes. It presents material from work with a young female offender who has
been caught up in violent family relations, committed violent offences and whose fantasy
life is also permeated by images of violence. Within an on-going conversation with a local
poet she finds a symbolic form to symbolise destructive sides of the self. The inter-subjective
recognition within the poetry-writing sessions takes place in a context where the tendency
to institutionalised shaming embedded in the youth justice system is temporarily
suspended. The paper considers the potential of such processes to facilitate moral learning
by fostering guilt, concern and the wish to make reparation.
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