Restorative Justice Movement Research Articles

The Synergy and Substance of Organizational and Community Change in the Response to Crime and Conflict: The Emergence and Potential of Restorative Justice

The story of the one-hundredth monkey has generated new ways of thinking about cultural transformation. Different experiences and new understandings of justice have emerged in a variety of cultural contexts and led to a rather sudden multi-national shift in thinking about the collective response to crime, harm and conflict that raises broader theoretical questions about restorative justice as a social movement or innovation. This article will describe the restorative justice movement in an historical context and its emergence into a worldwide phenomenon. The authors also examine the role of communities, or “instrumental communities” in public organizations.

The Vengeful Logic of Modern Criminal Restitution

Restitution, a perpetual presence in the life of the law, dwells on the margins of our modern legal landscape, and invokes a pre-legal moment in which injured parties bore the responsibility-or the privilege of themselves remedying the harms committed against them. This article explores the criminal sanction of restitution, and particularly restitution's surprising relationship with revenge. Rather than regarding bloodlust and the desire to cause suffering in those who first made us suffer as revenge's sine qua non, I argue that just as essential to revenge is a nostalgia for a prehistorical and prelegal time in which being wronged was an occasion not for recourse to the law, but for action. The article examines two distinct but related sites of restitutive justice within the contemporary criminal justice system where this fantasy of agency plays out. First turning to the victims'rights movement, observing that the movement has become ossified in a punitive logic that belies its pretensions toward a victim centered paradigm, the article then looks at the kinder, gentler restorative justice movement, which values rehabilitation and reintegration but is motivated as well by a vengeful impulse. The place of restitution in these movements emerges as the instantiation of a doubled fantasy of return to a state of equilibrium: on a leveled playing field occupied by wrongdoer and wronged, liberated from law's domination, a struggle between equals can result in the natural justice of a wrong repaid. This fantasy is born of nostalgia for an economy of revenge that exists only as an illusory ideal of agency vis-a`-vis those who wrong us, forever (or at least for now) kept at arm's distance by virtue of its institutionalization within a state that seeks to preserve its monopoly on force.

Restorative Justice in Action: The Principles and Practice of Youth Conferencing in NSW

The Young Offenders Act 1997 was a response to a perceived need for alternative methods of dealing with young people in trouble. While clearly its primary focus is on diverting young people from the court system it is also dependant on a philosophical approach to the management of juvenile justice. This chapter examines the process of youth justice conferencing in New South Wales within the context of the theory and aims of the restorative justice movement.

Sita’s Trousseau

This article focuses on the particular cultural factors that affect South Asian women who are abused and immigrant South Asian women who are abused, in particular, in the restorative justice process. By exploring cultural practices and the icon of Sita, the mythological heroine of the Ramayana, this article demonstrates how the South Asian ideals of womanhood and wifehood help to create a mind-set whereby South Asian women are reluctant to advocate for themselves and are reluctant to leave. Such a condition is contrary to the conditions and abilities assumed by the restorative justice movement for dispute resolution, inside or outside of domestic violence. It is concluded that restorative justice options are ill-suited to application among immigrant South Asian communities for domestic violence cases.

International Policy Formation: The Development Of Restorative Justice Policy Within The United Nations

Restorative justice and its related terms moved from the background of ancillary sessions to the floor of the United Nations Congress. This article documents and discusses the transfer of local policy to the international arena using the UN forum and restorative justice as a case study. First, a historical timeline traces the three influential forces, (1) the United Nations forum, (2) the non-governmental organization (NGO) activities, and (3) the individual Member States’ activities, behind the restorative justice movement onto the UN agenda. An integrated modification of Blumer’s process of collective problem definition is used as a framework to analyze the policy formation. Finally, the context of how future researchers may make use of the process is analyzed by comparing the traditional research development framework to Blumer’s policy framework. A need for wide spread implementation and outcome evaluations are needed as the policy is implemented is among the key findings.

Paradigm Muddle or Paradigm Paralysis? The Wide and Narrow Roads to Restorative Justice Reform (or, a Little Confusion May Be a Good Thing)

McCold (2004, this issue) argues that community justice and balanced and restorative justice (BARJ) models confuse people and distort the restorative justice movement. We argue that there are many sources of confusion and explain the differences between these approaches. Neither model poses any threat to restorative justice, and both community justice and BARJ can garner new support for restorative justice. We respond to misleading portrayals in McCold’s account of these movements (and of our writings about them) and suggest that more time should be spent on truly critical debates within the restorative justice movement, and in confronting real barriers to restorative justice reforms.

Can We Heal Ourselves? Transforming Conflict in the Restorative Justice Movement

Divisions within the contemporary restorative justice movement in the US often manifest in one state‐supported model: balanced and restorative justice (BARJ). Paul McCold, in this symposium frames the problem with BARJ as one of a corruption of restorative justice principles by its foundation in community justice. This article suggests that BARJ and McCold’s critique share a neglect of the transformative potential of restorative justice for realizing social and economic justice. Moreover, recent experience indicates that BARJ policy planning can take place in a way supportive of Social Equity Restorative Justice (SERJ). The time appears opportune for some peacemaking within the movement.

Paradigm Muddle: The Threat to Restorative Justice Posed by Its Merger with Community Justice

The restorative justice movement has great potential to reform the way society responds to crime and wrongdoing. One might logically assume that the greatest challenge to the new restorative justice paradigm is the traditional punitive criminal justice paradigm itself. A more immediate threat, however, is posed by merging community justice, another approach to reforming the justice system, with restorative justice. Community justice has superficial similarities to restorative justice but relies on the underlying authoritarian assumptions of the existing criminal justice system and on processes that exclude most of those individuals directly affected by the offense. This paper clarifies and contrasts the key elements of both the restorative justice and the community justice paradigms and explains the threat to restorative justice posed by combining and confusing the two.

Racism, Restorative Justice, and Reconciliation

Mission in the twenty-first century is done in the context of a global history marked by racism. The restorative justice movement, originating in civil society, has deep spiritual roots and offers a way to deal with racism and to move beyond it. Restorative justice views crime as harms done. Its objective is community safety, competency development for offenders, and victim's rights. Restorative justice leads to reconciliation through the reparation of human relations and forgiveness. This process opens the way to a new and dynamic understanding of the church.

Civic Participation in Professional Domains: An Introduction to the Symposium

Professionals have a unique capacity to encourage, distract, inform, and limit deliberation. The contributors to this symposium share a belief in what can be called democratic professionalism, the view that a number of key professions have civic roles to play in contemporary democracy and that such civic roles both strengthen the legitimacy of authority and render that authority more transparent and more vulnerable to public influence. In distinct ways, each contributor shows how professionals can help mobilize citizen participation inside and outside their domains. Significantly, the contributors to this symposium draw atten tion to democratic professional activities that are already hav ing an impact on civic life. We reflect on contemporary reform movements within professions, such as the restorative justice movement. And we notice how movements, such as the battered women's movement, have helped activate professionals. We observe that in seeking to change governing norms of practice within the academy, medicine, law, and else where, reform-minded professionals have demonstrated how their own domains can have positive potential. Reformers described in these pieces raise the intriguing possibility that pro fessionals might have a hand in helping reverse the depressing trends of diminished trust, efficacy, and participation in con temporary democracy. Why would professionals seek out more roles and encourage, for example, more lay participation in their decision making? Our essays point to a number of motivating factors. A merely commercialor technocratic-minded professionalism is vulnerable to problems of legitimacy stemming from its remote ness from the publics served. As William Sullivan argues, pro fessionals are given status and legal protections to serve purposes; failures to live up to this social compact can lead to loss of status and protection. And as Frank Fischer points out, professionals who do not work closely with lay people to establish relations of trust and to adjust to local knowledge can not adequately address complex policy problems. Professionals more embedded in the civic life of their communities can do a

Restorative justice circles: An exploratory study

Peacemaking circles have received a great deal of attention within the international restorative justice movement. The use of peacemaking circles for structuring communication and decision-making in many diverse cultures is probably as ancient as humankind. Peacemaking circles are particularly integrated and used among the many indigenous tribes of North America. This article reports on the development and use of peacemaking circles in South Saint Paul, Minnesota, representing the first exploratory study of circles in the US. The South Saint Paul initiative represents one of the oldest efforts in the US to adapt circles as a restorative justice approach within the community and schools. Peacemaking circles were found to be an effective approach to involve community members in the process of holding local offenders accountable for repairing the harm they caused, to assist crime victims, and to foster a greater sense of connectedness among all those affected by crime within the community.

The Other America: The Forgivers and the Peacemakers

For Panel on “Is America a Forgiving Place?” at Inangural Conference, Toward a Deeper Understanding of Forgiveness, Center for Religion, Ethics, and Culture, College of the Holy Cross, Septemper 15, 2001. The history of the traditions of nonviolence in America beginning with William Penn's Holy Experiment is discussed briefly and is related to the United Nations’declaration of a Decade of Education for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. Current movements including the restorative justice movement and community‐based mediation; dialogue; and nonviolence training and peace action, as well as the growing field of peace research and peace studies, are reviewed in light of their potential for further development of peace culture in the United States.

Restorative Justice: Outlining a New Direction for Forensic Psychology

ABSTRACT This article discusses the development of the restorative justice movement in the larger context of the history of the western legal tradition. It presents the theory of restorative justice and how it meets the needs of victims, offenders and the community. The research findings supporting the efficacy of restorative justice is briefly reviewed. Finally, professional opportunities for forensic psychologists within the restorative justice movement are discussed.

Restorative Justice and the Regulatory State in South African Townships

In South Africa the idea of restorative justice is most famously associated with the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; the concept underpinning the Commission's approach to dealing with apartheid-related violence (Minow 1998; Tutu 1999). Less well known is that restorative justice is also helping play a role in the day-to-day governance of South Africa townships. John Braithwaite (2000a) has suggested that the work being done by Clifford Shearing and his colleagues, establishing local peace committees in South African townships, illustrates how criminologists can work within the new regulatory state to enhance access to justice and safety. This article analyses these peace committees, placing them within the context of the emerging restorative justice movement. In broad terms, it argues that the peace committees display the core elements of restorative justice that distinguish them from other forms of private and informal justice, while at the same time pursuing a more ambitious and radical agenda than most restorative justice programmes. Part I of the article provides an overview of the peace committees established by the Community Peace Program, and attempts to bring some sort of clarity to ongoing debates about the meaning of restorative justice. Part II draws some similarities between peace committees and other restorative programmes, and contrasts these with other forms of private policing. These similarities are no accident: in promoting their work in townships, peace committee members are at pains to emphasize the core restorative elements of their programme so as to distinguish themselves from the other informal bodies that have sought to rule townships. This article argues that the differences between peace committees and other forms of township policing provide a dramatic example of a more general contrast between restorative justice programmes and other

Forgiveness and public deliberation: The practice of restorative justice

It is not easy to define the way we should be angry, with whom, about what, for how long. (1) Introduction Is forgiveness a social good that communities can further through mediated public dialogue between victims of crimes and offenders? Though commonly and rightly thought of as dependent upon personal feelings, in particular dependent upon the deliberate relaxing of the feeling of resentment, forgiveness has communicative and social dimensions. (2) These dimensions of forgiveness are at the forefront of the theory and practice of the restorative justice reform movement. Originating in just a few states in the 1970s, restorative justice programs are now quite common at the state and local level in the United States, handling mostly property offenses and minor assaults committed by juveniles. (3) The goal of restorative justice is to foster, through voluntary public dialogue, interpersonal reconciliation between victims and offenders as well as social reconciliation between offenders and the community. Trained facilitators encourage victims to express their feelings and to communicate to offenders the impact of their acts; facilitators also elicit communication from offenders about their life-situations and about their feelings of remorse or shame. The social dimension in restorative justice is furthered, in some programs, by the participation of community volunteers who symbolize the community's interest in reconciling victim and offender and in reintegrating offenders. The restorative justice movement is of interest to political theorists and ethicists because it raises key questions about the link between public dialogue and positive emotional states like the relaxing of resentment experienced in forgiveness. Though we understand how public dialogue contributes to clarification of practical choices, we know much less about how it helps us transform our emotional responses toward others. (4) The movement is interesting, too, as a challenge to general normative theories of criminal justice. In the first part of the paper, we analyze the theoretical justification for restorative justice, develop the central ideal of restorative communication, and outline the public procedures required for this ideal. In this section, we describe the views held by restorative justice theorists without assessing their philosophical soundness or their empirical validity. Then we briefly turn to one case description of restorative justice, Vermont's reparative probation program. In both sections we are guided by simple questions: What is the ideal of restorative communication at the heart of theories of restorative justice? Why is such communication needed? What are its goals, exactly? What are its practical requirements? What is the function of its public, community-oriented dimensions? Our description of the goals and structure of Vermont's attempt to institute restorative communication leads, in the third section of the paper, to a more general discussion of the implications of seeing forgiveness as the central goal of criminal justice. Even if restorative justice theorists are right that forgiveness is a social good we can foster through public deliberation, just how important is this good? Is forgiveness in tension with other goods we wish to pursue through the criminal justice system? We believe that we should announce our objectives up front. Restorative justice is a multifaceted critique of mainstream criminal justice theory and practice, a critique with which we are partly sympathetic. Further, we see the ideal of restorative communication, and especially the goal of greater public participation in criminal justice administration, as rich theoretically and worthy of more empirical study. Our analysis and case description are meant to help focus such empirical assessment of restorative justice programs. Nonetheless, we are inclined to be quite skeptical as to whether the criminal justice system should seek to place forgiveness and restoration ahead of other objectives. …

Restorative Justice

This article compares and contrasts the absence of prison in indigenous native culture with the creation and reliance on imprisonment by the modern nation state and proposes a model for the native system of justice based, in part, upon the échange à trois in Marcel Mauss’ classic work, The Gift.Utilizing the Maori parable of the échange à trois, Mauss originally expanded the economic patterns of native gift-giving and return to a wider cultural context. From this perspective, gifts from one kin group to another were viewed as part of an intricate and dynamic balancing of relationships between and among kin groups. This article contributes to the substantial body of literature based upon the theoretical construct of The Gift by demonstrating that the native response to the offending acts of individual kinsmen, or ‘the native sense of justice,’ is an inversion of the native response to gift-giving. In native culture, a kin group’s response to the loss or harm caused by an offending act is to require the offending individual’s kin group to restore the imbalance in kin group relations created by this loss or harm through a process of exchange. In this context, the article reformulates the ‘substantivist / formalist’ debate in economic anthropology and ethnojurisprudence to focus on the fact that in native culture, as opposed to state-based society, individual kinsmen are not only recipients and providers of exchange, but are part of the medium itself.The article concludes by examining the inevitable clash between the principles underlying the Restorative Justice Movement, which are exemplified by the ‘native sense of justice,’ and the ‘radical isolation of the individual’ that is a primary imperative of punishment in state-based society, including the wider question of whether prison will forever constitute a defining element in state-based society.

A 21st century ethical toolbox

EACH CHAPTER ENDS WITH FOR REVIEW AND EXERCISES AND NOTES SECTIONS PART I. GETTING STARTED 1. ETHICS AS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE What Is Ethics? Why Study Ethics? Reading: Sarah Stillman, by Us 2. ETHICS-AVOIDANCE DISORDERS Flying by Instinct Offhand Self-Justification Dogmatism Relativism 3. ETHICS AND RELIGION An Approach to Religious Let the Be Stories! Thinking for Yourself 4. ETHICAL TALK: GROUND RULES to Have a Fruitless Debate to Have a Useful Discussion Reading: Mary Jacksteit and Adrienne Kaufmann, Ground Network for Life and Choice, Common Ground Rules 5. SERVICE AND SERVICE-LEARNING Calls to Service Visits to a Homeless Shelter Reading: Danusha Veronica Goska, Ideals Reading: Courtney Martin, The of Transformation PART II. MORAL VALUES 6. TAKING VALUES SERIOUSLY Varieties of Values Attending to Values Readings for Analysis Alice Walker, Am I Blue? Ted Kerasote, from Bloodties 7. THE ETHICS OF THE PERSON Persons Face-to-Face Reading: Emmanuel Levinas, and the Face Made in the Image of God Reading: Pope John Paul II, from Evangelium Vitae Kant's Categorical Imperative Reading: Immanuel Kant, from Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals Rights, Equality, Justice 8. THE ETHICS OF HAPPINESS Hedonism Reading: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from Flow Utilitarianism Reading: J. S. Mill, from Utilitarianism Reading: Bertrand Russell, from The Harm that Good Men Do Can Utility Be the Single Measure of Values? 9. THE ETHICS OF VIRTUE An Abundance of Virtues A Greek View of Virtue Reading: Aristotle, from Nicomachean Chinese Views of Virtue Reading: Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching Cultivating Virtue Reading: John Sullivan, from Living Large 10. THE ETHICS OF RELATIONSHIPS Care Reading: Nel Noddings, from Caring and Community Reading: Kwasi Wiredu, from The Moral Foundations of an African Culture Expanding Circle Reading: Aldo Leopold, from The Land Ethic PART III. ETHICAL PRACTICE 11. CRITICAL THINKING Facts and Sources Inferences Definitions 12. JUDGING LIKE CASES ALIKE Consistency Is a Challenge to Restore Consistency Invented Cases Reading: Colin McGinn, Speciesism 13. MINDFUL SPEECH, BY SPOMA JOVANOVIC Words Matter! Deepening Ethical Dialogue Reading: Spoma Jovanovic and Roy V. Wood, from Speaking from the Bedrock of Ethics 14. WHEN VALUES CLASH Both Sides Could Be Right Integrating Values Big Decisions Reading: Roger Rosenblatt, How to End the Abortion War 15. CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING Need for Inventiveness in Creative Exploration Creative Provocations 16. REFRAMING PROBLEMS Opening Up a Problem Reading: Fran Peavey, Strategic Three Methods Reframing the Abortion Debate 17. MORAL VISION Working from a Vision Environmental Visions? Reading for Analysis: Ursula K. Le Guin, May's Lion PART IV. MAKING A DIFFERENCE 18. YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE Self-Possession Sexual Choices Reading: Keith Clark, from Being Sexual ... and Celibate Reading: Carol Queen, from Real Live Nude Girl Eating 19. YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD Power of One Becoming a Change-Maker Reading: Paxus Calta-Star, Not Deterred Reading: Ian Frazier, from On the Rez Reading: Vern Huffman, Stories from the Cha Reading: Fran Peavey, Questioning the Media's View of Women This Means You! 20. MAKING CHANGE TOGETHER Communities Making Change Joining a Change-Making Community Reading: Martin Fowler, The Restorative Justice Movement Reading: Luke Cole and Sheila Foster, The Environmental Justice Movement Notes for Teachers: Toolbox in the Classroom Experiential Teaching in Ethics, by Sharon Hartline

Goodbye to Hammurabi: Analyzing the Atavistic Appeal of Restorative Justice

A recent innovation in criminal justice, the restorative justice movement has serious implications for the relationship among crime, race, and communities. Restorative justice, which sprang up in the mid-1970s as a reaction to the perceived excesses of harsh retribution, features an active role for the victims of crime, required community service or some other form of restitution for offenders, and face-to-face mediation in which victims and offenders confront each other in an effort to understand each other's common humanity. This article questions whether restorative justice can deliver on its promises. Drawing on social science evidence, the author shows that the informal setting in which victim-offender mediation takes place is apt to compound existing relations of inequality. It also forfeits procedural rights and shrinks the public dimension of disputing. The article compares restorative justice to the traditional criminal justice system, finding that they both suffer grave deficiencies in their ability to dispense fair, humane treatment. Accordingly, it urges that defense attorneys and policymakers enter into a dialectic process that pits the two systems of justice, formal and informal, against each other in competition for clients and community support. In the meantime, defense attorneys should help defendants find and exploit opportunities for fair, individualized treatment that may be found in each system.

The impact of victim‐offender mediation: A cross‐national perspective

AbstractThe field of victim‐offender mediation, now in its third decade, has grown extensively throughout North America and Europe, with programs in more than twelve hundred communities. This article reports on results from three related studies on the consequences of participating in victim‐offender mediation, including programs in four of the United States (Umbreit, 1996, 1994a, 1994b; Umbreit and Coates, 1993), four provinces of Canada (Umbreit, 1999, 1995c), and two cities in England (Umbreit and Roberts, 1996). VOM is implemented differently in various places, reflecting cultural norms and mores. Given innumerable ways of doing victim‐offender mediation, are there common experiences shared among participants that can inform program delivery and justice policy?The VOM model was found to be a highly transportable and flexible program in diverse settings. High levels of client satisfaction with both the process and outcome were found, and a high level of fairness was expressed. VOM continues to be a promising model, reflecting the principles of the restorative justice movement and offering a firm foundation of practice wisdom and research from which other newer forms of victim‐offender dialogue, such as family group conferences, circles, and boards, can benefit (Bazemore and Umbreit, 1999).