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26 JULY 2010

NO 1607

Justice and fairness

In any social organization where a sub-group have considerable power to manipulate circumstances and are conscious of the rights of individuals in the group there is a constant tension between ‘proportional justice’ (sharing out resources, rewards, sanctions, attention, more or less equally among the members of the group or according to some publicly recognized scale) and a ‘fairness’ which involves responding to individual needs separately and uniquely. This is always a difficult balance to maintain for a whole group of individuals (in this case both children and adults) and the more so when it has to be done day in, day out, over very long periods and with a group whose membership is changing. (For example, in the ‘sample’ unit at the rate of an almost total turnover of children within three years and (optimistically) a turnover of say half the staff during that time.)

To maintain this balance firmly is difficult and stressful, but if achieved it is a potent source of satisfaction to both adults and children. Two further comments seem relevant.

1. There are difficulties in having to go on maintaining the balance but there are also some compensations. ‘Fairness’ to individuals will sometimes be seen to average out over a period so that it approximates to proportional justice. (Though this will not apply to all individuals, and some individuals do not have sufficient consciousness of their own continuity to appreciate it.)

2. It is certainly one of the benefits of some form of ‘shared responsibility’ (David Wills, 1960) or therapeutic community organization that this tension is brought into the open and the responsibility for maintaining it in balance shared, though by no means equally, among staff and children.

CHRISTOPHER BEEDELL

Beedell, C. (1970). Residential Life with Children. London. Routledge and Kegan Paul. pp. 147-148

REFERENCES

Wills, D. (1960). Throw away thy rod. London. Gollancz.

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