Abstract
Restorative justice is a holistic philosophy that has become increasingly popular in reformist criminal justice debates and criminological research. However, there is some debate as to whether its programs adequately address victims’ needs. To this end, this paper analyses the effectiveness of restorative justice practices on victims of crime. Drawing on my interviews conducted with victims of crime and legal experts in South Africa, the findings of this study offer support for the effectiveness of a restorative justice approach to addressing victim satisfaction. Restorative justice can enable the needs of victims to be more fully considered during the criminal justice process. This is very different from contemporary criminal justice, which has often effectively excluded victims from almost every aspect of its proceedings despite its continuous reform to protect and promote victims’ rights.
Highlights
Over the past decades, restorative justice has gradually emerged as a very important theme in reformist criminal justice debates and criminological research
The main focus of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of restorative justice practices on victims of crime in South Africa
The findings of this study provide notable support for the effectiveness of a restorative justice approach to addressing victim satisfaction
Summary
Restorative justice has gradually emerged as a very important theme in reformist criminal justice debates and criminological research. The idea of restorative justice refers to a constellation of models of justice This idea, like the theoretical and political concepts that it feeds, floods the numerous books, which, for more than forty years, have invaded the libraries of the faculties of criminology, victimology and penology. Among this abundant literature devoted to it, restorative justice is considered and supported as a third way, situated between the model of retributive justice and that of rehabilitative justice (Sherman and Strang 2007).
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