ABSTRACT
Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ) is a lens and a focus, which tends to perceive the law not only as the solution to a dispute, nor as the strong arm of the state, but also as a humane and holistic way of solving conflicts. It also aims to attend to and solve human and social difficulties, with the ultimate goal of generating the well-being and appeasement amongst individuals, families, the community, and society as a whole. However, it does not shy away from addressing and dealing with emotions and pain. TJ is at the crossroads of mental health, law, criminology, and other theoretical and treatment models. It focuses on the entirety of the legal system (e.g. family law, constitutional law, etc.), and its practitioners (e.g. judges, psychologists, probation officers, etc.). However, in this chapter, I shall focus exclusively on the penal continuum. TJ is a revolutionary way of practicing law, doing rehabilitation with humanity, and caring for fellow human beings and their well-being at its core. It is not only a theory but also a problem-solving method, which courts tend to heavily draw upon. However, because it is rather flexible and goal-oriented, and lacks theoretical construct validity in the scientific sense, it is at risk of remaining in a parallel altruist universe. Therefore, mainstreaming TJ is a main challenge. Clearly, then, there is a need for integrating TJ into empirically validated models of doing justice, supervision, and treatment, which is what this chapter is trying to initiate by linking TJ with (1) empirical theories of legitimacy of justice-procedural justice; (2) the LJ-PJ-TJ ensemble to legal theory; (3) this ensemble to the ten key principles of the ‘problem-solving court’; and (4) this ensemble to the Risk-Needs-Responsivity model.
