Restorative Justice Today: Practical Applications

Young Children's Understanding of Restorative Justice

“…However, retributive justice is now criticized for destroying people's social personality (Consedine, 1995), fueling conflict, and deepening harm, especially for relatively minor offenses (Daly and Immarigeon, 1998;Zehr, 2002Zehr, /2015. In recent decades, restorative justice is regarded as a meaningful solution to the excessive reliance on punishment (Barnett, 1977), and its value has been increasingly recognized globally (see Sullivan and Tifft, 2006;van Wormer and Walker, 2013).…”

“…Restorative justice concerns healing the harm caused by wrongdoing and meeting the needs of the involved parties, including the victims, offenders, and communities (Van Ness andStrong, 1997/2015;Daly, 2000;Zehr, 2002Zehr, /2015. Despite the increasing importance of restorative justice in jurisprudence (see Braithwaite, 2002a,b) and its application extending from the legal system to peacemaking circles, school systems, and family group conferencing (see Strang and Braithwaite, 2001;Sullivan and Tifft, 2006;van Wormer and Walker, 2013), surprisingly little research has focused on how children understand the concept of restorative justice compared to the vibrancy of research on children's understanding of moral concepts such as distributive justice (e.g., Fehr et al, 2008;LoBue et al, 2011;Smith and Warneken, 2016) and procedural justice (e.g., Gold et al, 1984;Shaw and Olson, 2014). The current study addressed the gap in the literature by investigating young children's preference for restorative treatment or punitive treatment in response to varied moral transgressions.…”

“…The first pillar constitutes the harms and related needs that involve the victim, the offender, and the community; the second pillar concerns itself with the obligations caused by the harms; the third pillar involves the engagement of all concerned parties in the justice-seeking process. The multidimensional meanings of restorative justice clarified by Zehr have been embraced by subsequent discourses in the field (see Van Ness andStrong, 1997/2015;van Wormer and Walker, 2013).…”

Procedural justice and frontline policing: the effects of the police complaints system

“…This plan is agreed to and enforced by law however it is entirely organised, discussed and completed outside of the courts and with limited police involvement. The focus remains on restorative practises or restorative justice; that is repairing harm or damage that has been caused and particularly, implementing strategies to prevent the issue from re-arising (Van Wormer and Walker, 2012). Similar plans in police administration and management have been deployed in America with some positive feedback in preliminary research.…”

Trying to Restore Justice

“…The debate about whether or not it is appropriate to offer incentives reveals a “zero sum” interpretation of a restorative process (Robinson & Shapland, 2008, p. 340). This problem is not endemic to New Zealand; all around the globe there are debates around the definition of restorative justice (van Wormer & Walker, 2012). However, New Zealand has been fairly consistent over time in its approach to restorative justice as a victim-oriented process, as evidenced by its placement within the Victims’ Right Act of 2002, and according to the restorative justice providers interviewed.…”