4 Problem-solving courts and criminal justice

In the previous section of this course, you looked at the contrasting approaches of the conventional adversarial court model and the FDAC. The families and professionals who had first-hand experience of these forms of court highlighted various benefits of the FDAC. However, it’s also important to recognise some of the limitations they mentioned, for example, that some staff are less experienced, leading to poorer relationships with parents. In addition, Jenny recognised that there can also be benefits to more traditional court processes. She argued that although the more adversarial approach to traditional family court isn’t perfect, in some cases it is possible to make progress.

As ruptures happen between multiple people or groups, repairs often require involvement from many parties in order to be able to work. In this sense, social repairs require collaboration between all concerned (Muran et al., 2021). To support this collaboration, key parameters must be established and understood by each party as part of the problem-solving process. These key parameters include determining whose problem the process attempts to solve. Understanding this will, then, set the scene for further outcomes. This links back to ideas of criminologist Nils Christie, mentioned in Section 2, who argues that conflicts tend to be taken from their rightful owners in formal legal processes. By prioritising relationships with those subjected to the court process, problem-solving courts arguably take a different approach to repairing social ruptures.