Restorative Justice

Last week I discussed what Retributive Justice was, this week we are going to go over Restorative Justice. All forms are obviously necessary; however some people favor a certain one over the other or favor a few and completely disagree with the other. The point is that all the forms of justice are heavily criticized and in order to criticize each one, one must first be familiar with all of them. There are many people who have not given an actual effort to learn about all of them. Restorative just has fundamental elements, that will truly help some criminals.

               Restorative justice is “a new movement in the fields of victimology and criminology. Acknowledging that crime causes injury to people and communities, it insists that justice repair those injuries and that the parties be permitted to participate in that process,” (Restorative Justice, 1). In other words, the main focus is to repair and to restore as much of the damage as they can. Restorative Justice views criminal behavior and actions as not just lawbreaking, but also realizes that it they harm done to the victim, community, and themselves. It also allows for more victims and communities to respond to crime, rather than just the government and the offender. Additionally, it measures success by the amount of harm that is repaired or prevented, instead of how punishment is administered (Restorative Justice, 1). One of the ways that this form of justice is applied, is by face-to-face meetings.

               Having meetings between the victims, and their offenders, and even the affected members of the community are influential in understanding and confronting the fact that crime and justice correlate with one in other. In understanding their correlation, there is more possibility of crime repair and prevention. These meetings only occur when the offender has admitted to the crime at hand, and both parties are willing to participate. One form of the meetings is called Victim Offender Mediation, it allows for the victim and the offender to meet in a controlled environment. There is always a mediator present and both the victim and the offender discuss what happened, the victim talks about the harm that was done to them and how it affected them (Restorative Justice,2). This internalizes with the offender and they take responsibility for the damage they have done, preventing them to want to do it again.

               In the United States, there are only 300 victim offender mediation programs. There has been some research done on these programs and their result. The research indicated that there is more satisfaction with the victims and offenders who participated in the program, their chances of completing their restitution obligations increase, the victims fear decreases, and offenders are less likely to reoffend versus their normal court process counterparts (Restorative Justice,2). Another form of Restorative punishment is group conferencing. In this activity, the offender, the victim, family of both victim and offender, and any other support systems of either party come together to discuss the aftermath of the crime (Restorative Justice, 2).

               Conferencing goals are to give the victim a chance to be involved in the crime response, gives the offender awareness towards the gravity of their actions, allows the offender to somewhat make amends, and gives the victim and the offender community support. Restorative justice also deals with peacemaking. Peacemaking, also known as sentencing circles, brings in all the affected parties of the crime, judges, prosecutors, police and court workers, defense counsel, and judge to come up with a sentencing plan that addresses the concerns of all the people involved and affected. The idea behind peacemaking is to build a sense of community, offender may make amends, the cause of criminal behavior, and promote healing of everybody who was affected by the crime (Restorative Justice,3). Restorative Justice has many type of programs set up to in a way “punish” criminals. Many do not like it because they feel it is too lenient. 

Sources:

http://www.d.umn.edu/~jmaahs/Correctional%20Assessment/rj%20brief.pdf