NCJ Number
196413
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 42 Issue: 3 Dated: Summer 2002 Pages: 596-615
Date Published
2002
Length
20 pages
Annotation
Restorative justice has been subject to a number of attacks, both empirically and philosophically; this paper addresses some of these criticisms and suggests that they stem in part from misunderstandings about what restorative justice aims to achieve and in part from demanding too much from restorative justice at the current stage of its development.
Abstract
The author first acknowledges that the restorative justice literature is plagued with imprecision and confusion, and all practices that claim to be restorative justice are not worthy of a defense. The author also concedes that there is a risk that restorative justice advocates may claim too much for its approach to administering justice. In reviewing the various critiques, the author draws primarily from her experience in New Zealand, a country that has gone further than most in implementing restorative justice, notably in the use of family group conferences, which were introduced in 1989. The main criticisms of restorative justice are grouped under the following headings: restorative justice erodes legal rights; restorative justice results in net-widening; restorative justice trivializes crime, particularly violence against women; restorative justice fails to "restore" victims and offenders; it results in discriminatory outcomes; it extends police powers; it leaves power imbalances untouched; it leads to vigilantism; it lacks legitimacy; and it fails to provide "justice." For each of these criticisms, the author responds to the criticism at an empirical level where possible, or refers to restorative justice values to question the validity of the criticism. Among the author's conclusions is that, at the very least, restorative justice offers a new mode of thinking about crime and justice and a way of challenging conventional justice systems to address their failings. Particularly, there is strong evidence that at a general level restorative justice currently offers more to victims than traditional criminal justice processes. There is also evidence that restorative justice processes expect more of offenders in the area of rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. The challenge to critics of restorative justice practices is to show what conventional criminal justice systems have achieved in the way of such progress in the last 10 years. 78 references