INFORMAL JUSTICE IN THE UK

Informal Justice and Growth of Informal Institutions in the UK

Informal Justice and Growth of Informal Institutions in the UK

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to make an analysis that whether informal justice and growth of informal institutions in the UK and elsewhere has in fact, constituted an expansion of the state power within the community rather than its contraction. In the criminal justice process, there is some ignorance of informal justice theory when it comes to the role of professionals. This theory plays a very important role in starting different justice programs. There are different theoretical that considers the professionals to be the key intermediaries between state and citizens. The informal justice theory or the theory of democratic professionalism discusses that there can be a key role of professionals in enhancing and growing the participation of republican in public affairs. This paper mainly focuses on the ways that how does the informal justice system and the growth of informal institutions have an effect on the expansion of state power. It is argued that the main reason behind this is the professionalism, which cannot be separated from the democratic professionalism. Democratic professionalism plays an important role through which informal justice can evade the problems, which are linked to the participation of informal justice for the community.

Discussion

The "informal justice" has constituted by the working or customary courts run by traditional chiefs appointed (Nzosi). They have places in large cities like Brazzaville and Pointe Noire but especially in the villages. The "informal justice" is also well developed in areas where the judiciary does not exist in the modes of traditional courts or "Bongui." The "informal justice" is often used where the formal justice does not bring satisfaction to people, especially on matters of witchcraft, divorce, and land law.

Proponents of "informal justice" use the following modes of dispute resolution: conciliation, mediation, arbitration and respectable offices. Leaders and key players in the formal justice and the "informal justice" use of approaches, methods or techniques of various conflict resolution and do not seek to collaborate.

There have been many debates over the informal of communal justice and these debates have been placed periodically in sociologic scholarship. The topic of informal justice have been discussed extensively in the 1980s, but its discussion has decreased in 1990s. The reason behind the decrease in the discussion was that the focus of scholars was on some other topics, however, the informal justice practice was continuously increasing and growing. The term informal justice, which is referred as “informal justice” is increasing speedily in the area of criminal justice. UK government has started discussion on informal justice in the later half of 1990s, by conducting individual conferences and started funding these pilot programs. The main advocates of informal justice have claimed that almost all the cities in UK have informal justice programs implemented for the purpose of stage of development (Umbreit 2001:xxxvi). Nor is interest limited to the UK. According to Umbreit (2001:xlv), almost 1,000 programs in 16 ...