A special issue on restorative justice: unravelling the mystery

Abstract

In restorative justice, crime is recognised fundamentally as a violation of people and relationships, rather than as a violation of law (Zehr 1990). When criminal justice systems shift to framing crime in this way, there is a consequent recognition that an appropriate response to crime is to allow those affected by crime to discuss the event and arrive at a consensus about reparation (Latimer et al. 2005). With the increasing incorporation of restorative justice approaches and processes into mainstream criminal justice systems, researchers have recognised the need for thorough evaluations of the impact of restorative justice on various important outcomes, such as recidivism rates and participants’ perceptions that restorative justice procedures and their outcomes are fair and satisfactory. A wide and varied body of restorative justice research has been developing to meet this challenge over the past two decades, including program evaluations (Trimboli 2000), literature reviews (Braithwaite 1999), and meta-analyses (Latimer et al. 2005). In this special issue, we call for researchers to meet the next important challenge in restorative justice scholarship, framed eloquently by Kenneth Polk in 1994: Why does restorative justice work in the desired ways, for whom is it working or not working, and does it work differently for different people? Note that Polk presented us with these challenging questions in 1994— nearly two decades ago. Since that time, relative inattention to these questions in restorative justice research has left us with a strong understanding of the powerful effects of the restorative justice process as a whole, but without an equivalent understanding of why the process is so powerful, or the elements of the process that are more or less powerful. This relegates the transformative power of restorative justice to the realm of mystery. In order to develop restorative justice procedures and policy most effectively in the future, we seek a greater understanding of the basic mechanisms that drive the success or failure of restorative justice processes, and a more nuanced insight into the specific factors of