Frenquently Asked Questions

What is Restorative Justice?

Background

Restorative Justice is an alternative to the current Retributive Justice model of responding to crime and justice in this country. It is frequently used in juvenile cases at least in a modified form where the concepts of rehabilitation and victim restitution are common.

Groups such as the Victim Offender Mediation Association (The international VOMA is no longer active but was an early leader in the movement and local programs still operative.) and National Association for Community Mediation (NAFCM) have established networks of community-based service centers that work cooperatively with prosecutors, schools, and workplaces to use dialogue to address conflicts that have caused harm or qualify as criminal behavior. England and Native American communities in Canada have also been leaders in advancing the practice. Several authors are paving the way to understanding and using Restorative Justice around the world. A list of resources is included below.

What is Restorative Justice?

Restorative Justice is a philosophy, a set of practices, a movement, and a way of life. It operates from a set of principles rooted in relationships, human dignity, and harmony between individuals and their communities. Restorative Justice (RJ) calls on and evokes the best of human ideals and values.  It inspires us to evolve into better human beings and gain a broader understanding of each other’s histories, values, and beliefs.

RJ assumes that we are members of communities and societies that operate on common core principles. These principles include:

• People have a right to be safe and when harm occurs, the community should embrace and support those who have been involved.
• All persons have value, are worthy of respect, and have the potential for healing, growth, and change.
• Community is created through relationships, and through dialogue and understanding relationships can be enhanced.
• The most effective solutions to harm evolve from those impacted by the behavior/system and not from being imposed by others.
• We must work locally to build global and peaceful responses to harm, violence, and disrespect.

How is RJ different from regular justice?

RJ is often contrasted with the concept of Retributive Justice in how it defines and seeks justice. The latter revolves around the rule of law, the objective determination of guilt, and imposition of punishment for wrongdoing. Whereas RJ revolves around the concept of harm and seeks to allow those directly involved to define that harm and together, within the relationship of community, to remedy the harm (to the extent possible) in individually specific ways.

Many of the intentions behind the Criminal Justice System are like those of RJ. Both care about public safety, accountability, and a means to “pay a debt” to society. Through restitution and sentence-to-service programs there is also a desire to provide financial benefit to the victim or community for the loss that occurred because of the crime.

However, the locus of power, the “place” where the processes are initiated, and the people involved in creating the process, making the decisions, and following through with implementation of those decisions is different. In an RJ process, the community is present directly rather than through the judiciary’s role in the system. The victim(s) is present directly rather than through the prosecutor, and the person who committed the offending behavior is present directly rather than through the defense attorney. Family members, friends, and neighbors are all present and can speak directly to each other about the impact of the behavior on them and pledge their help in meeting the ongoing needs of victim, community, and the person who offended. This approach addresses the reality of secondary victims and community impact.

Restorative Justice also believes that violence and crime harms everyone. The victim is harmed both specifically and in terms of his/her right to assume a compact of safety and support within his/her community. The offending person is harmed in his/her own humanity as well as the relationships s/he has with family, community members, and the victim. The community is harmed in terms of the pain its members endure–as victim, the person who offended, and in the breaking of the compact of civil society. The community has a need (and an obligation) to comfort and serve its members, to invest in their ability to rebuild wholeness and health, and to re-establish the fabric of community connections necessary for everyone to be safe.

What ate the specific goals of RJ?

The goals of RJ involve the victims, offenders, and community. They are to:

For Victims:

• Provide safety and connection for victims as members of a community with no silencing, blaming, or ostracizing of them because of the harm that has been done to them.
• Bring the economic and material loss they have incurred back to the pre-harm level to the extent possible.
• Give them space to voice their experience and tell the impact the event has had on them. Then, they can ask for what would help most to address the harm.
• Support a process of healing and recovery for physical, emotional, and mental harm to the extent possible. The process might include social services, victim offender mediation, participation in the criminal justice system, school-based restorative practices, or health care providers etc.

For Those Who Have Offended

• Provide mechanisms for accountability and a path for making amends.
• Invest in addressing root causes of the behavior and supporting future success.
• Rebuild relationships with self, family, and community for long-term human connection and support.

For the Community

• Ensure capacity and resources to effectively respond to both victims and offenders.
• Establish mechanisms for re-establishing a sense and compact of safety within the fabric of the community and a civil society.
• Develop skills and processes to prevent future harm to any of its members.

Who is a part of the RJ movement?

Many people find their beliefs are compatible with the principles of RJ and find a home in the RJ movement. Proponents of RJ operate:

• From a central value of faith and peace.
• Out of advocacy for victims’ rights or prison and criminal justice reform.
• From belief in accountability with opportunities for redemption or reconnection to the community/society in which people  live.
• A belief that we must act in a way that has integrity and lives the vision of justice i.e. the “means” and the “ends” are related.
• A desire to respond and intervene in practical ways that work to prevent future harm.

How does RJ work?

Many practices embrace the philosophy and approach of RJ. One-to-one dialogue sessions, group conferences, circles of healing and accountability, restitution, community service, treatment, victim services, and dozens of other concrete programs embody the principles and actions of a comprehensive RJ program. RJ practices are being used in schools, juvenile courts, the medical industry, contract and civil law, places of employment, post incarceration re-entry, and even in cases of severe and violent criminal acts.

They are also used at every point or stage of a case including immediate response as an alternative to calling/involving law enforcement, diversion before charging a crime, pre-sentence investigations by probation/parole officers, an alternative to administrative hearings, as a complement to jury and judge-lead processes, after conviction, during someone’s incarceration for a crime, and when someone who offended re-enters a community after serving their sentence.

However, the RJ practice of restorative dialogue is also rewarding in cases where no other alternative exists such as expired statutes of limitations, no found or convicted offender, issues of relationships and emotional harm and betrayal between family members and friends, in cases where on-going relationships are desired/needed such as family and child cases, schools, or when the harm is beyond what can be repaired by financial restitution and/or punishment such as sexual abuse and misconduct.

Who works in RJ programs?

RJ programs are often independent nonprofit organizations based in communities. However, they also exist within the criminal justice system, in schools, places of employment, and anywhere else where conflict and harm occur and people seek a constructive way to heal that harm. RJ practices empower people to create their own solutions and use effective and reasonable-cost responses that help re-establish relationships and achieve a sense of justice for everyone involved.

An underlying obligation for programs and practitioners is to cause no additional harm to those with whom they work. There is also a commitment to ensure access to both services and to the field of practice by a growing, diverse, and inclusive community of people.

Practitioners meet these obligations through a set of professional ethics such as:

• Be trained before starting to provide services and then to seek feedback and guidance from peers, mentors and clients on a regular basis.
• Continue to learn and update skills, specifically related to cultural competency and social justice.
• Share knowledge by training others and give honest feedback when someone is not qualified or can improve their work.
• Assess the situation at all stages of the process–including necessary pre-mediation sessions–and conduct mediation/dialogue only when people are ready and able to constructively participate.

• Use personal and positional power to make a positive difference in the world.
• Identify and address systems of oppression.
• Open opportunities for people who have skills and have earned the respect of others as a mediator/facilitator.

Updated 2005

Barbara Raye

Resources

Prominent sources for restorative justice information include:

• Howard Zehr, often called the “grandfather of restorative justice,” along with Kay Pranis, Fania Davis, Dennis Sullivan, and Larry Tifft.
• Carolyn Boyes-Watson and John Braithwaite
• Routledge International Handbook of Restorative Justice.
• Critical Issues in Restorative Justice, Barb Toews and Howard Zehr

·        Restoring Justice, Fifth Edition: An Introduction to Restorative Justice by Daniel W. Van Ness, Karen Heetderks Strong, Jonathan Derby, et al.

·        Restorative Justice Up Close: First-Person Accounts of an Approach That Works

• Many resources on victim-centered justice system – search google
• Living Justice Press – a nonprofit publisher for restorative justice sine 2002