RESTORATIVE JUSTICE APPROACH

Restorative Justice Approach

Restorative Justice Approach

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 different meanings...Each community is unique and each community decides what a sentencing circle is to them. So, when you say a sentencing circle in one community, it doesn't mean the same thing in another community." To be sure, definitions of restorative justice vary considerably.

Restorative Justice is often said to be a paradigm shift of real significance due to its main principal of putting the victim rather than the state at the forefront of the judicial process. This type of justice is of great contrast compared to the retributive justice now chiefly used in the criminal justice system in England and Wales, which asserts that crime harms the state, and that the state must react by punishing the offender. Recent legislation in England and Wales has now paved the way for change; (Coker, 2006)after two decades of restorative justice research programmes the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 ordered that from June 2000, Youth Offending Teams would officiate Reparation Orders issued to young offenders to repair the harm they've caused to their victims, or if the victims do not want to get involved, to benefit the community, for example repairing property, removing graffiti (Graef, ...