RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice

Introduction

Restorative justice (RJ) is a valued-based approach to act in response to unlawful activity and conflict, with equal focus on the offender, victim, and community. Restorative justice focuses on making good the wrongdoing by healing the harm, predominantly to relationships between individuals that is created by harmful behaviour. (Vieraitis, Kovandzic, 2008)

Community-Based Approach

The primary stakeholders in restorative justice processes are the person(s) who effected the harm (offender), the person(s) harmed (victim), and the affected community (Cavanagh, 2000). When the staff at The Church Council were writing the text for their restorative justice reflection sheet, we quickly agreed on a title: "Restorative Justice: What Are We Talking About?!" There was very good reason for this. It had become clear that the term "restorative justice" was being used by different people and different groups to mean many different things. (Garner, 2009)The same was discovered in undertaking this research. Various statements were found which made reference to the ambiguous nature of a definition. Pauline Bush, Executive Director of the Regina Alternative Measures program, stated at the Saskatchewan PATHS conference, "I think there needs to be a lot more understanding of what restorative justice stands for before we continue within this dialogue because clearly it's something that's not understood within the room." Irene Smith, the Executive Director of the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia and also a participant at the PATHS conference, noted that the definition of restorative justice was elusive in her experience with the new policy in Nova Scotia and that this could lead to serious consequences. She questioned how the limits of the program could be defined if the actual program could not. (Dylan, Regehr, Alaggia, 2008)Bev Putra, another conference participant noted the differing definitions within the Aboriginal community when she stated that, "Sentencing circles have ...