Book Reviews

These books have been reviewed on Restorative Justice Online.

Restorative justice realities: research in a European context

reviewed by Martin Wright: Nine countries, nine ways of doing restorative justice, and several approaches to researching it. In order to describe the research, the authors also provide useful summaries of how restorative justice has been put into practice in Belgium, Norway, Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and England and Wales. Mostly these countries use victim-offender mediation, in some cases with a high proportion of indirect (shuttle) mediations; a few, including the Netherlands and Norway, have begun to experiment with conferencing. Perhaps the best way to indicate the book’s scope is to give examples of the information it contains, rather than attempt a summary.

RJ

Because we have a system that is known as the 'justice system', I understand that we probably need to differentiate Restorative Justice from mere 'justice'. [...]

The promise of restorative justice: New approaches for criminal justice and beyond

reviewed by Martin Wright It is becoming increasingly clear that the principles of restorative justice can be used, as the editors say, outside the formal criminal justice system, and this book bears witness to that. Half is about criminal justice, and half about other applications in schools and elsewhere. The contributors reflect the book’s origins among a group at Fresno Pacific University in California, but other chapters come from Bulgaria, Canada, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.

Social work and restorative justice

from Howard Zehr's entry on Restorative Justice Blog Social Work and Restorative Justice: Skills for Dialogue, Peacemaking and Reconciliation, edited by Elizabeth Beck, Nancy P. Kropf and Pamela Blume-Leonard (Oxford University Press, 2011), is an important collection of essays on this subject. It will be of interest to both social work and restorative justice practitioners. The following is the Afterward that Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz and I were invited to contribute: The field that has come to be known as restorative justice was born in experiment and practice rather than theory; the term “restorative justice” and the conceptual framework came later. Although it did not directly emerge from the field of social work, restorative justice was born in a context and era much influenced by social work. It is appropriate, then, that the fields of restorative justice and social work are again converging, as the authors in this volume so convincingly argue....

Restorative Justice Dialogue: An essential guide for research and practice

Restorative Justice Dialogue: An essential guide for research and practice. Mark Umbreit and Marilyn Peterson Armour (2010). New York: Springer Publishing Co. 339 pages.

Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime

by Eric Assur Not too many years ago Restorative Justice (RJ) was introduced, or artfully expounded on, by Howard Zehr. Now we have what appears to be a similarly unique view of the victim of crime topic through new and different lenses. The author, a seasoned and well credentialed victim advocate, and the “National Center” now offer an enlightening commentary and daunting challenge regarding the state of victim services. The book recommends a new way to do business, a paradigm shift to what is now labeled, Parallel Justice (PJ).

What Have I done

Jean, Thanks for your comments. It's great to hear about such experiences as they can help all of us as we look for ways to [...]

"What Have I Done"

We (Turning Point Partners) is about to use this book as part of a diversion process. In preparing the team to facilitate a training of [...]

What have I done? A victim empathy programme for young people

by Eric Assur This book is very practice oriented. It looks and feels like a workbook. The accompanying DVD is to help with didactic use with groups of teens. The professionals Wallis acknowledges as having helped him are largely probation or ‘youth offending service’ professionals in the United Kingdom. The Canadian, Australian, or United States reader immediately notes that the spelling of the Kings Language is of the British or UK variety. Regardless of spelling, this book is a simple, easy to use workbook to guide the skilled and the not-so-well-informed youth services professional who works with teens who have offended.

restorative justice & wrongful convictions

Thank you for posting this. Some think there is little connection between restorative justice and wrongful convictions (or miscarriage of justice). They would be wrong. [...]

True stories of false confessions

by Eric Assur The justice system seeks to administer true justice. That a number of citizens have been executed and then later been revealed as innocent is a profound statement that the system is not perfect. The Innocence Project and similar groups in the North American justice system have shown that hundreds of incarcerated persons should never have been found guilty. This book is a sobering rendition of a few dozen such crime stories and legal travesties. Confessions would seem to be convincing evidence of actual guilt. But they are not. True Stories is an anthology of unnumbered chapters (there are over 40) called ‘cases’ that are arranged or presented in groupings based on the type of faulty confession.

Book Review: The penal crisis and the Clapham Omnibus: Questions and answers in restorative justice.

There has always been a temptation to regard restorative justice as an accessory to the conventional process, in which less serious cases may be diverted out of the system, but for more serious ones a restorative process is only available as an addition to punishment. After two books explaining the theoretical and political case for restorative justice (Cornwell 2006, 2007), the author has drawn up a proposal for basing the whole system on restorative principles. His book is structured in three sections of five chapters, each addressing one of the questions which the ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’ (the lawyer’s stereotype of the ordinary person) would want answered.

Book Review: Discipline that restores

Book Review: As We Forgive

Book Review: Urban Crime Prevention, Surveillance and Restorative Justice.

This work is a collection of papers on various themes from the 2006 Criminology conference at the University of Sheffield. As might be expected, the presenters are generally from London, Oxford, and Cambridge, Sheffield and/or United Kingdom governments. This review will only comment on the four Restorative Justice segments, almost 100 pages, of the book

Book Review: Urban Crime Prevention, Surveillance and Restorative Justice.

by Eric Assur This work is a collection of papers on various themes from the 2006 Criminology conference at the University of Sheffield. As might be expected, the presenters are generally from London, Oxford, and Cambridge, Sheffield and/or United Kingdom governments. This review will only comment on the four Restorative Justice (RJ) segments, almost 100 pages, of the book.

Book Review: Youth Justice in Practice, Making a Difference

Eric Assur reviews the book Youth Justice in Practice, Making a Difference which discusses several issues related to juvenile justice including the implementation of restorative justice.

Martin Wright: Review of Peacemaking Circles & Urban Youth: Bringing Justice Home

In 1988 a young woman named Molly Baldwin started working with young people in deprived suburbs of Boston, MA, including many immigrants from the world’s trouble spots. Her programme, Roca (Spanish for ‘Rock’), developed into a place where young people could relate to adults, who support them and help to meet their needs. Seven years ago, Roca adopted the Indigenous practice of holding Circles, in which each person only speaks, in turn, when holding the ‘talking piece’.

Marshall, Chris. 2008. To Punish or Not to Punish?

Chris Marshall reviews Changing Paradigms: Punishment and Restorative Discipline by Paul Redekop

Resource Review: A Restorative Story: Mary Finds Some Money

A Restorative Story: Mary Finds Some Money is a training kit designed to teach children from ages four to eleven about restorative practice.