Introduction

Surveillance is a dimension of restorative justice but, as this chapter will demonstrate, not limited to evidence gathering. Strategies of gathering and analysing personal information feature at many points during a restorative justice process. Furthermore, the participants in, and promoters of, restorative justice processes are themselves shaped by cultures of surveillance in everyday life. This chapter makes an original contribution by bringing together two discourses and practices: surveillance and restorative justice, and framing the intersection as the restorative gaze. For this first time a theological perspective on surveillance is deployed as a critical tool in the context of restorative justice. The proposed theological paradigm challenges a traditional framing of watching and being watched. Instead of motifs of supervision from on high, this chapter draws on the notion of surveillance from the cross. Cruciform surveillance privileges solidarity with all under unjust and discriminatory surveillance. The Jesus who watches the world in self-giving love models a paradigm for practising surveillance that turns traditional models through 90 degrees. Cruciform surveillance differs from that suggested by the iconography of Christ, the glorified judge/emperor; Christ pantocrator as he is portrayed in the apse of a basilica. Such an image of the divine gaze too readily lends support to patriarchal and kyriarchal models of oppressive watching which, in turn, underpin retributive modes of justice. In distinction, surveillance from the cross offers a lens shaped by servanthood, friendship and agape as self-giving, unconditional love.