Procedural Justice, Therapeutic Jurisprudence, and Reoffending: Adjudicating Palestinian Minors in the West Bank’s Military Court

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X231159880
• Author: Shai Farber,Edna Erez
• Date: 01 November 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X231159880

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2023, Vol. 67(15) 1581 –1596

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X231159880

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Article

Procedural Justice,

Therapeutic Jurisprudence,

and Reoffending: Adjudicating

Palestinian Minors in the

West Bank’s Military Court

Shai Farber1 and Edna Erez2

Abstract

The Juvenile Military Court (JMC), established in 2009 in the West Bank, handles

offenses perpetrated by Palestinian minors, consisting mostly of security-related

violations. With the establishment of the JMC, and a subsequent three-stage legal

reform in handling juvenile offenders, Palestinian minor suspects and defendants have

been accorded various procedural rights. This study addresses the impact of these

rights on the criminal careers of Palestinian minors appearing in the JMC. It first

reviews the demographic profile of 8,301 minors handled by the JMC between 2000

and 2018, describes their offenses, and offense transition between their initial and

second arrest. Using trend analysis, the study compares minors’ reoffending level in

the years before and after the reform. The findings suggest significant differences in

minors’ reoffending level between the years preceding and following the legal reform.

Possible explanations for the findings are offered, and the article concludes with

policy implications and directions for future research.

Keywords

Juvenile Military Court, reoffending, security-related offenses, procedural justice,

therapeutic jurisprudence

Introduction

In 2009, Israel enforced the 109th amendment of the Security Provisions Order, and,

for the first time, a Juvenile Military Court (JMC) was established in the West Bank

1Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

2University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

Corresponding Author:

Shai Farber, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel.

Email: shai.farber@biu.ac.il

1159880IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X231159880International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyFarber and Erez

research-article2023

1582 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 67(15)

(Judea and Samaria). One venue, referred to as the Samaria court, is located close to

Salem in the north of Israel, near Jenin in the north of the West Bank; the other venue

is the Ofer court, located in Judea in the north of the West Bank, on the border between

Jerusalem and Ramallah. Before the establishment of the JMC, minors were sentenced

in regular Military Court along with the adults, although with some age-related adjust-

ments. Following the establishment of the JMC, in a three-stage legal reform, several

significant legal amendments central to the rights of minors, detailed in the next sec-

tion, were passed. It has been argued that these rights have the potential to increase the

litigants’ sense of procedural fairness and have therapeutic benefits for juveniles

appearing in the JMC (Farber & Benicho, 2021).

Despite the significance of establishing a special Juvenile Military Court in the

West Bank and granting procedural rights for minors processed therein, research on

the reform’s impact on the criminality and criminal career of the minor defendants

processed in court is scarce (Ben-Naftali et al., 2018; Khen, 2014; Viterbo, 2018).

Most research to date has focused on procedural rights’ effects on adult litigants (e.g.,

Tyler, 1990, 2003). There are reasons to expect that providing procedural rights to

minors, particularly rights incorporating elements of therapeutic jurisprudence, will

affect juveniles’ compliance with the law.

This exploratory study examines the offenses that bring minors to court and then

addresses the question of the reform’s impact on their criminality. The article first

describes the profile of the juveniles prosecuted in the JMC in terms of their age at first

prosecution, typical offenses, involvement in security-related offenses (e.g., stone

throwing at soldiers, police, or cars; violence during protests; sheltering terrorists or

providing material assistance to terrorists/terrorist organizations, etc.) and related vio-

lations (e.g., illegal entry to Israel or areas closed to the public) processed in the mili-

tary court. It then compares the reoffending level of the juveniles processed by the

court before and after the legal reform was implemented between 2000 and 2018. As

the next section indicates, there are theoretical and empirical reasons to expect that

these legal reforms will impact the level of reoffending and the criminal careers of the

minors processed by the JMC.

The article first presents the history of the JMC in the West Bank. It then reviews

the Procedural Justice (PJ) and Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ) perspectives and the

motivations behind juvenile security-related crimes. The research findings follow,

including a profile of the Palestinian minors processed by the JMC, their law viola-

tions, and the level of reoffending behavior before and after the reform. The article

concludes with policy implications of the findings and directions for future research.

The History and Jurisdiction of the Juvenile

Military Court

The Juvenile Military Court (JMC) is part of the military court system in the West

Bank. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel established the Military Court sys-

tem as part of its obligation and authority to ensure an effective administration and

safety in the areas it occupied (Shamgar, 1982). The founding of the Military Court