Restorative justice seeks to repair the harm done to victims and communities from criminal acts, while also seeking to rehabilitate offenders. It takes four primary forms: victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, neighborhood reparative boards, and sentencing/peacemaking circles. Evaluations show high levels of participant satisfaction and some evidence of reduced recidivism compared to traditional criminal justice approaches. However, restorative justice faces challenges around its application to serious crimes, procedural safeguards, power imbalances, and the potential for net-widening of social control.

1. Juvenile Justice: An Introduction, 7th ed.
Chapter 12
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

2. Chapter 12
What You Need to Know
• Restorative justice seeks to repair the harm done to both the
victim and the community, while simultaneously changing the
behavior of the offender.
• A primary argument used to explain restorative justice is the idea
of reintegrative shaming, which argues that shame can be used in a
positive fashion to bring offenders back into society.
• Restorative justice takes four primary forms: victim-offender
mediation, family group counseling, neighborhood reparative
boards, and sentencing/peacemaking circles.
• Victim-offender mediation, also called victim-offender
reconciliation programs, involves bringing the victim and offender
together with a mediator to try and arrive at an understanding of
all positions and find a solution agreeable to both parties.

3. Chapter 12
What You Need to Know (cont.)
• Family group conferencing includes family members, friends,
and support groups with the victim and offender in trying to
find a solution to the issues.
• Neighborhood reparative boards do not require victim
participation and require the offender to make amends,
restore the victim and community to the pre-offense state,
and help the offender understand what he or she did.
• Sentencing circles are open to anyone in the community and
are often a part of the court. The sentences can include
virtually anything, including jail time.
• Evaluations of restorative justice reveal a great deal of
satisfaction among participants and some reduced recidivism,
although a great deal of additional research is needed.

4. Chapter 12
Introduction
• Restorative justice - Concerned with repairing the damage
or harm done to victims and the community through a
process of negotiation, mediation, victim empowerment,
and reparation.
• Restorative justice - About relationships — how
relationships are harmed by crime and how they can be
rebuilt to promote recovery and healing for people affected
by crime.
• This chapter examines the idea of restorative justice as a
means of addressing the needs of youthful offenders,
victims, and the community.
• Restorative justice - A major shift from existing practices.
Consequently, it is important to define and discuss the
philosophical and practical differences between restorative
justice and most juvenile justice system activity.

5. Chapter 12
Background of Restorative Justice
• Over the past 30 years, there has been an increasing
call for programs that pay more attention to the
combined needs of victims, offenders, and the
community.
• The concept of restorative or reparative justice seeks
to use interventions that return the victim and
offender to their pre-offense states.
– For offenders, it means assuring that the action will not be
repeated.
– For victims, this means repairing the harm done. For the
community, it means returning things to their state prior to
the offensive behavior.

6. Chapter 12
Background of Restorative Justice (cont.)
Retributive Justice
• Generally focuses on the
lawbreaker and the
imposition of sanctions for
the purposes of deterrence,
vengeance, and/or
punishment.
• A criminal act is viewed as an
offense against society or the
state, and the victim is
nothing more than a witness
for the state.
Restorative Justice
• Seeks to repair the harm that
was done to both the victim
and the community, while
simultaneously changing the
behavior of the offender.
• Sees crime as an act against
the victim and community,
and the focus shifts from
what is best for the state to
repairing the harm that has
been committed against the
victim and community.

7. Chapter 12
Precursors to Restorative Justice
• Restorative justice has been the dominant model of criminal
justice throughout most of human history for all the world’s
peoples.
• The earliest codified laws, such as the Law of Moses, the
Code of Hammurabi, and Roman laws, all outlined the
responsibility of individuals to deal with criminal acts
committed against them.
• The very bases for the development of a juvenile court and
juvenile justice system are found in restorative justice
principles.
– The parens patriae philosophy of the juvenile court focuses not on
the offense but the offender and the actions needed to help the
youth. Therefore the emphasis was not on punishment.

8. Chapter 12
Precursors to Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Dispute resolution - One can trace modern dispute resolution
back to the early 1970s. During this time, a number of
jurisdictions started programs to divert minor disputes out of
the formal court system.
• Dispute resolution- A mechanism for achieving a number of
goals simultaneously:
– First, the parties involved in the situation work together to resolve the
problem rather than having some outside authority impose a solution.
– Second, any dispute that reaches a settlement is one less case with
which the formal justice system must contend. This alternative
alleviates some congestion in the court system.
– Third, this informal approach empowers victims by giving them a
direct voice in their own matters. Victims retain complete veto power
over the final outcome.
– Finally, dispute resolution provides the victim with a face-to-face
encounter with the offender.

9. Chapter 12
Precursors to Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Dispute resolution - Programs can vary in terms
of the cases they handle or the procedures they
use. They typically share five traits in common;
1. A third-party mediator is involved.
2. Disputants usually know each other.
3. Participation must be voluntary.
4. Processes are informal.
5. Disputants are usually referred to the process by
someone in the criminal justice system.

10. Chapter 12
Precursors to Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Conflict resolution programs - Utilized to teach youths
alternative methods for resolving conflicts before they occur.
• Peer mediation programs- Bring together disputing parties
with a peer mediator to discuss the situation and attempt to
resolve the dispute to the satisfaction of both parties.
– In many cases, there is no clear victim and offender. Instead, the two
parties are involved in an argument or disagreement that, left
unchecked, could escalate into a physical confrontation.
– The goal of the mediation is to defuse the situation before it reaches
that stage and to keep it from occurring again in the future.

11. Chapter 12
The Theoretical Basis of Restorative
Practices
• The basic argument underlying restorative justice is
that reactions to crime and harmful behavior
should seek to repair the harm done to the
individual victim and society while simultaneously
reintegrating and addressing the needs of the
offender.
– Repairing harm (to victim and community)
– Engendering stakeholder involvement (victims,
offenders, families, and community)
– Transforming the role of community and government

12. Chapter 12
The Theoretical Basis of Restorative
Practices (cont.)
• Exchange theory - Proceeds from the assumption
that equal reciprocity is a cornerstone of social
interaction.
– The offender is expected to make amends for the harm
caused, in exchange for reintegration back into society

13. Chapter 12
The Theoretical Basis of Restorative
Practices (cont.)
• Reintegrative shaming - Rests on the assumption
that typical processing of offenders through the
criminal justice system serves to isolate the
offender and stigmatize him or her.
– Shame can be used in a positive fashion to bring the
offender back into society.
– Under reintegrative shaming, the system needs to
express its disapproval of the criminal activity while
simultaneously forgiving the offender for the action if the
offender is willing to learn from the event and make
reparations to the victim and society.

14. Chapter 12
The Theoretical Basis of Restorative
Practices (cont.)
• Collective efficacy - Transform communities into
active participants in controlling problem youths
and socialize them into proper societal roles.
Community members need to feel empowered to
do something about problems.
• Social disorganization - Can mitigate the ability of
residents to effect change and control in the area.
– Restorative justice offers a mechanism to build the social
capital necessary to address youthful offenders and the
causes of misbehavior.

15. Chapter 12
Types of Restorative Justice
• Four primary aims to restorative justice:
1. Empowerment - Reflects the need for all interested
parties to be involved in the process. This provides a
sense of legitimacy for both the victim and the offender.
2. Restoration - Refers to repairing the harm done to all
participants. At the same time, retribution is disavowed
as a legitimate response to the behavior.
3. Reintegration- of both the offender and the victim into
the community, without the stigma of being an
offender or being different from the other
community members.
4. Emotional harm- of both the victim and the
community, must be addressed.

16. Chapter 12
Types of Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Achieving those primary aims requires that the
restorative approach be grounded on two additional
factors:
1. Procedural fairness - Refers to the fact that the process
must respect all the parties involved. The rights (both
legal and human) and wishes of all participants must be
recognized as legitimate by the participants.
2. Satisfactory outcome - Means that all parties agree with
the proposed resolution and are willing to follow through
with the plan of action. The failure to achieve procedural
fairness and a satisfactory outcome from the process
itself will make it impossible to fully realize the major
aims of restorative justice.

17. Chapter 12
Types of Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Victim–offender mediation (VOM) - Also referred to as victim–
offender reconciliation programs (VORPs), is a direct outgrowth of
the dispute resolution/dispute mediation programs of the early
1970s, and is considered the oldest form of restorative justice.
• The basic premise of VOM is that the criminal/victimization incident
and its consequences are complex and beyond the ability of the
criminal code to address on its own.
• Where the formal criminal justice response to crime is to simply
impose the sanction outlined in the statutes, VOM seeks to deal
with the needs of both the victim and the offender.
– Perhaps the most important concern addressed in VOM meetings is to
identify for the offender the types and level of harm suffered by the victim
as a result of the crime.
– The victim is given the opportunity to express his or her concerns about
the crime and his or her loss.

18. Chapter 12
Types of Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Neighborhood reparative boards (NRBs) – also called
neighborhood accountability boards – have existed since the
mid-1990s and typically deal with nonviolent youthful
offenders.
– Not unlike other restorative practices, NRBs seek to restore the
victims and community to pre-offense states, require the offender to
make amends, and aid the offender in understanding the impact of
his or her actions on the victim and community.
• Family group conferencing (FGC) - The greatest difference
between FGC and VOM is the inclusion of family members,
close friends, and other support groups of the victim and
offender in the conferences.
– There is also the possibility of including criminal justice system
personnel, including social workers, police officers, and an offender’s
attorney.

19. Chapter 12
Types of Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Peacemaking circles - Based on Canadian First Nation practices and
began formal operation in the early 1990s. Circles invite members
from across the community to participate in determining the
appropriate sanctions for offenders.
– Participants in circles typically include all of the parties found in FGCs, as
well as general community members who wish to be included.
• Sentencing circles - May function as either a part of the court or
separate from the court. The intended outcome of the circle is
consensus on a plan of action that may include a wide array of
activities.
– Plans of action may include further meetings between the victim and
offender, apologies by the offender, restitution, community service,
treatment/rehabilitation programs, and/or explicit sentencing
recommendations to the trial judge

20. Chapter 12
The Impact of Restorative Justice
• Restorative justice programs are intended to have a
number of different possible outcomes, including
rehabilitating the offender and repairing the harm
done to the victim.
• Satisfaction, fairness, and compliance - Assessments
of the impact of restorative justice have most often
relied on outcomes such as victim satisfaction,
feelings of fairness by victims, and compliance with
the agreements.

21. Chapter 12
The Impact of Restorative Justice
– Current results contrast greatly with those found in
analyses of formal criminal justice system processing, in
which victims and offenders report lower satisfaction
and feelings of fairness.
– Participants in fully restorative programs report higher
levels of satisfaction and perceived fairness, followed by
those in mostly restorative programs. Individuals from
programs rated as not restorative report the lowest
levels of satisfaction and fairness.

22. Chapter 12
The Impact of Restorative Justice (cont.)
• Satisfaction, fairness, and compliance - The success of
restorative justice programs is also measured in terms of the
ability of the meetings to achieve consensus on a solution and
whether the parties carry through with the agreement.
• Recidivism - Reducing reoffending is an important restorative
goal, particularly in a discussion of juvenile justice.
– It appears that earlier studies of recidivism did not show consistent
reductions in recidivism but that more recent studies have shown
recidivism reductions.
– In fact, a recent meta-analysis of 35 restorative justice programs found
that two-thirds of the effect sizes showed such reduction in recidivism.
– The restorative justice programs also resulted in higher victim
satisfaction and that offenders were more likely to comply with
restitution orders.

23. Chapter 12
Problems and Issues with Restorative
Justice
1. Restorative justice programs may be too ambitious in their
attempt to solve very complex societal problems.
2. Related to the first problem is that restorative justice has been
used primarily with less serious and property crimes. There is
a great deal of debate over whether this approach can be
used successfully with serious violent offenses.
3. There exists a concern that, while voluntary, there is an
underlying level of coercion in most programs. What makes
this truly problematic is that many programs do not allow the
presence of defense attorneys, thus raising the issue of
violation of an accused individual’s constitutional rights and
procedural safeguards.

24. Chapter 12
Problems and Issues with Restorative
Justice (cont.)
4. There is concern over how the “community” is defined and
who is allowed to represent the community. This can be a
very important concern because the participants help mold
the outcome and the expectations for the solution.
5. There is a distinct imbalance of power in most restorative
justice programs. This is especially problematic when
juvenile offenders must face not only the victim but also the
victim’s support groups, members of the criminal justice
system, and strangers from the general community.

25. Chapter 12
Problems and Issues with Restorative
Justice (cont.)
6. The issue of net-widening: Net-widening refers to the
situation in which the introduction of a new program or
intervention serves to bring more people under the
umbrella of social control. This is especially problematic
when the new programs are intended to take people
currently being served in the formal justice system in order
to divert them to the new program.