The Little Book of Restorative Justice

Revised and Updated

Howard Zehr

• Publisher: Good Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781680990447
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Alternative Dispute Resolution
• Index: Law

Howard Zehr is the father of Restorative Justice and is known worldwide for his pioneering work in transforming understandings of justice. Here he proposes workable principles and practices for making Restorative Justice possible in this revised and updated edition of his bestselling, seminal book on the movement. (The original edition has sold more than 110, 000 copies.)Restorative Justice, with its emphasis on identifying the justice needs of everyone involved in a crime, is a worldwide movement of growing influence that is helping victims and communities heal, while holding criminals accountable for their actions.This is not soft-on-crime, feel-good philosophy, but rather a concrete effort to bring justice and healing to everyone involved in a crime. In The Little Book of Restorative Justice, Zehr first explores how restorative justice is different from criminal justice. Then, before letting those appealing observations drift out of reach into theoretical space, Zehr presents Restorative Justice practices. Zehr undertakes a massive and complex subject and puts it in graspable from, without reducing or trivializing it.This resource is also suitable for academic classes and workshops, for conferences and trainings, as well as for the layperson interested in understanding this innovative and influential movement.

1.
An Overview

How should we as a society respond to wrongdoing? When a crime occurs or an injustice is done, what needs to happen? What does justice require?

For North Americans, the urgency of these questions has been intensified by the traumatic events of September 11, 2001. The debate is an old one, though, and is truly international in scope.

Whether we are concerned with crime or other offenses, the Western legal system has profoundly shaped our thinking about these issues—not only in the Western world, but in much of the rest of the world as well.

The Western legal, or criminal justice, system’s approach to justice has some important strengths. Yet there is also a growing acknowledgment of this system’s limits and failures. Victims, offenders, and community members often feel that justice does not adequately meet their needs. Justice professionals—judges, lawyers, prosecutors, probation and parole officers, prison staff—frequently express a sense of frustration as well. Many feel that the process of justice deepens societal wounds and conflicts rather than contributing to healing or peace.

Restorative justice is an attempt to address some of these needs and limitations. Since the 1970s, a variety of programs and approaches have emerged in thousands of communities and many countries throughout the world. Often these are offered as choices within or alongside the existing legal system. Starting in 1989, however, New Zealand has made restorative justice the hub of its entire juvenile justice system.

In many places today, restorative justice is considered a sign of hope and the direction of the future. Whether it will live up to this promise remains to be seen.

Restorative justice began as an effort to deal with burglary and other property crimes that are usually viewed (often incorrectly) as relatively minor offenses. Today, however, restorative approaches are available in some communities for the most severe forms of criminal violence: death from drunken driving, assault, rape, even murder. Building upon the experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, efforts are also being made to apply a restorative justice framework to situations of mass violence.

These approaches and practices are also spreading beyond the criminal justice system to schools, to the workplace, and to religious institutions. Some advocate the use of restorative approaches such as “circles” (a particular practice that emerged from First Nation communities in Canada) as a way to work through, resolve, and transform conflicts in general. Others pursue circles or “conferences” (an effort with roots both in New Zealand and Australia, and in facilitated victim-offender meetings) as a way to build and heal communities. Kay Pranis, a prominent restorative justice advocate, calls circles a form of participatory democracy that moves beyond simple majority rule (see pages 50-51 for a fuller explanation of circles as understood in the restorative justice field).

In societies where Western legal systems have replaced and/or suppressed traditional justice and conflict-resolution processes, restorative justice is providing a framework to reexamine and sometimes reactivate these traditions.

Although the term “restorative justice” encompasses a variety of programs and practices, at its core it is a set of principles, a philosophy, an alternate set of guiding questions. Ultimately, restorative justice provides an alternative framework for thinking about wrongdoing. I will explore that framework in the pages that follow, and look at how it could be put to use.

Why this Little Book?

In this Little Book, I do not try to make the case for restorative justice. Nor do I explore the many implications of this approach. Rather, I intend this book to be a brief description or overview—the CliffsNotes, if you will, of restorative justice. Although I will outline some of the programs and practices of restorative justice, my focus in this book is especially the principles or philosophy of restorative justice.

The Little Book of Restorative Justice is for those who have heard the term and are curious about what it implies. It is also for those who are involved in the field but are becoming unclear or losing track of what they are trying to do. I hope to help bring clarity about where the restorative justice “train” should be headed and, in some cases, to nudge the train back onto the track.

Such an effort is important at this time. Like all attempts at change, restorative justice has sometimes lost its way as it has developed and spread. With more and more programs being termed “restorative justice,” the meaning of that phrase is sometimes diluted or confused. Under the inevitable pressures of working in the real world, restorative justice has sometimes been subtly coopted or diverted from its principles.

The victim advocacy community has been especially concerned about this. Restorative justice claims to be victim-oriented, but is it really? All too often, victim groups fear, restorative justice efforts have been motivated mainly by a desire to work with offenders in a more positive way. Like the criminal system it aims to improve or replace, restorative justice may become primarily a way to deal with offenders.

Others wonder whether the field has adequately addressed offender needs and made sufficiently restorative efforts. Do restorative justice programs give adequate support to offenders to carry out their obligations and to change their patterns of behavior? Do the programs adequately address the harms that may have led offenders to become who they are? Are such programs becoming just another way to punish offenders under a new guise? And what about the community at large? Is it being adequately encouraged to be involved and to assume its obligations to victims, to offenders, and to its members in general?

Our past experience with change efforts in the justice arena warns us that sidetracks and diversions inevitably happen in spite of our best intentions. If advocates for change are unwilling to acknowledge and address these likely diversions, their efforts may end up much different than they intended. In fact, “improvements” can turn out to be worse than the conditions that they were designed to reform or replace.

One of the most important safeguards we can exert against such sidetracks is to give attention to core principles. If we are clear about principles, if we design our programs with principles in mind, if we are open to being evaluated by these principles, we are much more likely to stay on track.

Put another way, the field of restorative justice has grown so rapidly and in so many directions that it is sometimes difficult to know how to move into the future with integrity and creativity. Only a clear vision of principles and goals can provide the compass we need as we find our way along a path that is inevitably winding and unclear.

This book is an effort to articulate the restorative justice concept in straightforward terms. However, I must acknowledge certain limits to the framework I will lay out here. I am often considered one of the founding developers and advocates of this field. Even though I have tried hard to remain critical and open, I come with bias in favor of this ideal. Moreover, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, I write from my own “lens,” and that is shaped by who I am: a white, middle-class male of European ancestry, a Christian, a Mennonite. This biography and these, as well as other, interests necessarily shape my voice and vision.

Even though there is somewhat of a consensus within the field about the broad outline of the principles of restorative justice, not all that follows is uncontested. What you read here is my understanding of restorative justice. It must be tested against the voices of others.

Finally, I’ve written this book within a North American context. The terminology, the issues raised, even the way the concept is formulated, reflect to some extent the realities of my setting. I hope that this book will be useful for others, as well, but it may require some translation for other contexts.

With this background and qualifications, then, what is “restorative justice”? So many misconceptions have grown up around the term that I find it increasingly important to first clarify what, in my view, restorative justice is not.

Restorative justice is not . . .

• Restorative justice is not primarily about forgiveness or reconciliation.

Some victims and victim advocates react negatively to restorative justice because they imagine that the goal of such programs is to encourage, or even to coerce, them to forgive or reconcile with offenders.

As we shall see, forgiveness or reconciliation is not a primary principle or focus of restorative justice. It is true that restorative justice does provide a context where either or both might happen. Indeed, some degree of forgiveness or even reconciliation does occur much more frequently than in the adversarial setting of the criminal justice system. However, this is a choice that is entirely up to the participants. There should be no pressure to choose to forgive or to seek reconciliation.

• Restorative justice is not mediation.

Like mediation programs, many restorative justice programs are designed around the possibility of a facilitated meeting or an encounter between victims, offenders, and perhaps community members. However, an encounter is not always chosen or appropriate. Moreover, restorative approaches are important even when an offender has not been apprehended or when a party is unwilling or unable to meet. So restorative approaches are not limited to an encounter.

Even when an encounter occurs, the term “mediation” is not a fitting description of what could happen. In a mediated conflict or dispute, parties are assumed to be on a level moral playing field, often with responsibilities that may need to be shared on all sides. While this sense of shared blame may be true in some criminal cases, in many cases it is not. Victims of rapes or even burglaries do not want to be known as “disputants.” In fact, they may well be struggling to overcome a tendency to blame themselves.

At any rate, to participate in most restorative justice encounters, a wrongdoer must admit to some level of responsibility for the offense, and an important component of such programs is to name and acknowledge the wrongdoing. The neutral language ...