RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice

Introduction

Restorative justice is based on the view that crime is more than simply a violation of the law—an offense against governmental authority. It is a violation of human relationships that cause multiple injuries to victims, communities, and even offenders. Each is hurt in different ways and each has different needs that must be met in order for healing to begin. Crime disturbs our sense of trust and often results in feelings of suspicion, separation, and discrimination. Crime creates rifts between friends, relatives, neighbors, and communities. It often produces a hostile relationship where no previous relationship existed. An often-overlooked result of crime is that the victim and offender have a relationship—they have a painfully negative experience in common. Left unresolved, that hostile relationship negatively affects the welfare of both (Pranis, 2005).

The term “restorative justice” was coined by Albert Eglash in a 1977 article, “Beyond Restitution: Creative Restitution,” in which he identified three types of justice: retributive, distributive, and restorative. Ideas of restorative justice gained widespread recognition in the 1980s, and by the 1990s had been integrated into some mainstream correctional policy and practice in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, and other countries around the world (Llewellyn, 2005).

Discussion

Restorative justice addresses a unique set of questions: what harms occurred, who was harmed, and how can matters be made right. In doing so, it renounces vengeance and punishment as a means of ensuring social conformity and control. It distinguishes between the offense and the offender, respects each stakeholder in the conflict, and considers no one a “throw-away person.” Adherents insist on the priority of public safety. For that reason, they accept prisons and jail as a means of temporary restraint, even if, in the case of dangerous offenders, this involves long-term incarceration (Rodzik 2006).

Support for restorative justice arose from multiple forces, including public dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system, the victims' rights movement, feminist critiques of patriarchal justice, peacemaking, and critical criminology, and the shift toward community justice endeavors such as community policing and community corrections. Rising crime rates, a fairly widespread belief that the correctional system was ineffective in reducing recidivism, and public discourse and activism by victim's rights organizations laid the groundwork for acceptance of a new model of justice (Yazzie, 1994).

A growing canon of literature attests to the social, moral, and personal satisfaction that the restorative approach engenders in all participants. Empirical evidence suggests that restorative justice “works” and can meet its objectives. Emerging in the 1970s as isolated grass-roots criminal justice initiatives based on reconciliation and reintegration, rather than on retribution, it has become an international movement promoting both criminal and social justice. In 2002, the United Nations adopted the Declaration of Basic Principles on the Use of Restorative Justice Programmes in Criminal Matters(Herman, 2005).

The term restorative justice , first recorded in 1977, refers to restoring a peace and harmony that a criminal act has broken; it means restoring the social balance that had been subverted by some violation of human ...