Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice: A system for dealing with offending behaviour that focuses on rehabilitating offenders through reconciliation with victims. This enables an offender to see their crime's impact and empowers victims by giving them a ‘voice’.

Changing the Emphasis: Restorative justice switches emphasis from the needs of the state to the needs of the victim. This treatment seeks to be a healing process as it is more about reparation than retribution.

Focus Points of Restorative Justice: The victim of the crime and their recovery and the offender and their recovery/rehabilitation process.

Key Features of Programme: Trained mediators supervise meetings, a non-courtroom setting where they meet, face-to-face or via video, victim can confront the offender and explain the effect of the incident on them so the offender can comprehend the consequences of their actions, including emotional distress it caused. There needs to be active involvement with a focus on positive outcomes for both.

Sentencing and Restitution: May occur pre-trial or alongside a prison sentence, as an alternative to prison, or as an incentive to reduce the length of a sentence. It could be financial restitution or emotional.

Restorative Justice Council: The RJC is an independent body whose role is to establish clear standards for the use of restorative justice and to support survivors and specialist professionals in the field. They advocate for the use of restorative practice beyond dealing with crime, such as preventing and managing conflict in many areas including schools, children’s services, workplaces, hospitals and communities.

Needs of the Survivor: The RJC reported the results of a major seven-year research project. 85% of victims reported satisfaction with meeting their offender face-to-face and 78% would recommend it to other people experiencing a similar situation. About 60% of victims felt the process had made them feel better and only 2% felt worse.

Counterpoint to Needs of the Survivor: Wood and Suzuki (2016) argue that restorative processes are not as survivor-focused as often reported in satisfaction surveys. The researchers say that restorative justice processes can become distorted, such as when survivors of crime are ‘used’ as a way of helping to rehabilitate offenders, rather than being helped themselves.

Recidivism: A meta-analysis of 10 studies by Strang et al (2013) compared offenders who experienced face-to-face restorative justice schemes with those who just experienced custodial sentencing and the restorative justice group was significantly less likely to re-offend. This was larger in offenders convicted of violent crimes than in crimes against poverty. Kristin Bain (2012) found the same.

Abusing the System: Programmes may hinge on an offender’s intentions being honourable. Van Gijseghem (2003) suggests that offenders may use restorative justice for all kinds of reasons: avoiding punishment, playing down their faults, and even taking pride in their relationship with the survivor using direct contact.