The Big Book of Restorative Justice

Four Classic Justice & Peacebuilding Books in One Volume

Howard Zehr, Allan MacRae, Kay Pranis, Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz

• Publisher: Good Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781680991147
• Topic: Droit
• Subtopic: Règlement extrajudiciaire des litiges

For the first time, the four most popular restorative justice books in the Justice & Peacebuilding series— The Little Book of Restorative Justice: Revised and Updated, The Little Book of Victim Offender Conferencing, The Little Book of Family Group Conferences, and The Little Book of Circle Processes —are available in one affordable volume.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 a soft-on-crime, feel-good philosophy, but rather a concrete effort to bring justice and healing to everyone involved in a crime. Circle processes draw from the Native American tradition of gathering in a circle to solve problems as a community. Peacemaking circles are used in neighborhoods, in schools, in the workplace, and in social services to support victims of all kinds, resolve behavior problems, and create positive climates.Each book is written by a scholar at the forefront of these movements, making this important reading for classrooms, community leaders, and anyone involved with conflict resolution.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. An Overview

Why this Little Book?

About this revised edition

Restorative justice is not . . .

Restorative justice is concerned about needs and roles

2. Restorative Principles

Three pillars of restorative justice

The “how” and the “who” are important

Restorative justice aims to put things right

A restorative lens

Defining restorative justice

The goals of restorative justice

Guiding questions of restorative justice

Signposts of restorative justice

3. Restorative Practices

Core approaches often involve a facilitated encounter

Models differ in the “who” and the “how”

Models differ in their goals

A restorative continuum

4. Where From Here?

Retributive justice vs. restorative justice

Criminal justice vs. restorative justice

One vision

A way of life

Restorative justice is a river

Appendix I:

Fundamental Principles of Restorative Justice

Appendix II:

Restorative Justice in Threes

Appendix III:

Restorative Justice? What’s That?

Appendix IV:

Ten Ways to Live Restoratively

Appendix V:

Restorative Justice and Peacebuilding

Endnotes

Additional Reading

About the Author

Acknowledgments

A special thanks to the many friends and colleagues who gave me feedback on this manuscript. This includes my students, former students, and colleagues at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding where I have taught since 1996. I especially want to thank Barb Toews, Jarem Sawatsky, Bonnie Price Lofton, Robert Gillette, Vernon Jantzi, Larissa Fast, and Ali Gohar for their careful attention and suggestions.

For this new edition, I am especially thankful to Sujatha Baliga for her careful reading and suggestions.

CHAPTER 1

An Overview

How should we as a society respond to wrongdoing? When a crime occurs, when an injustice or harm is committed, what needs to happen? What does justice require? The urgency of this question is emphasized daily by events reported in the media.

Whether we are concerned with crime or other offenses and harms, 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 system’s approach to justice has some important strengths. Yet there is also a growing acknowledgment of this system’s limits and failures. Those who have been harmed, those who have caused harm, and community members in general often feel that the criminal justice process shaped by this legal system does not adequately meet their needs. Justice professionals—law enforcement officers, judges, lawyers, prosecutors, probation and parole officers, prison staff—frequently express a sense of frustration as well. Many feel that the criminal justice process 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 practices 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, although in some occasions they are used as an alternative to the existing system. Since 1989, New Zealand has made restorative conferences the hub of its entire youth 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, but many are optimistic.

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 and universities, to the workplace, and to religious institutions. Some advocate the use of restorative approaches such as circles processes (a practice that emerged from First Nation communities in Canada) as a way to work through, resolve, and transform conflicts in general. Others pursue circle processes and other restorative approaches 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.

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. I sometimes envision restorative justice as a blend of key elements in modern human rights sensibilities and traditional approaches to harm or conflict.

Although the term “restorative justice” encompasses a variety of programs and practices, at its core it is a set of principles and values, 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 illustrate how it translates into practice.

Why this Little Book?

In this Little Book, my intention is not 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. Other books in this Little Books of Justice & Peacebuilding series explore practice models more thoroughly; a list of these is provided at the end of this book.

The Little Book of Restorative Justice is for those who have heard the term and are curious about what it implies. But it is also an attempt to bring clarity to those of us involved in the field because it is so easy to lose clarity about our direction and what we have set out to do.

Restorative justice claims to be victim-oriented.

All social innovations have a tendency to lose their way as they develop and spread, and restorative justice is no different. 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 those who have offended in a more positive way. Like the criminal system that it aims to improve or replace, restorative justice may become primarily a way to deal with those who have offended.

Others wonder whether the field has adequately addressed the needs of those who have offended and made sufficient efforts to help them become their best selves. Do restorative justice programs give adequate support to those who have caused harm to carry out their obligations and to change their patterns of behavior? Do restorative justice programs adequately address the harms that may have led those who cause harm to become who they are? Are such programs becoming just another way to punish those who have harmed under a new guise? And what about the community at large? Is the community being adequately both allowed and encouraged to be involved and to assume its obligations?

Another concern is whether in articulating and practicing restorative justice, we are replicating patterns of racial and economic disparities that are prevalent in society. Is restorative justice as practiced in the United States, for example, being applied primarily for white folks? Is it adequately addressing underlying disparities?

Our past experience with change efforts in the justice arena warns us that sidetracks and diversions from our visions and models 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 and values. If we are clear about principles and values, if we design our programs with these in mind, if we are open to being evaluated by these principles and values, 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 and its principles in straightforward terms. However, I must acknowledge certain limits to the framework I will lay out here. Even though I have tried hard to remain critical and open, I come with a 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 and values 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, and even the way the concept is formulated reflect to some extent the realities of my setting. The first edition has been widely translated into other languages, but the translations needed for other contexts go beyond language.

With this background and these 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. Before I do that, however, I’ll make a few comments about this revised edition.

About this revised edition

Much has happened since this book was first released in 2002. The book itself has sold more tha...