Repairing Communities Through Restorative Justice

Source: (2002) Lanham, MD : American Correctional Association.

Restorative justice goes beyond traditional law enforcement and corrections, attempting to repair community-wide injuries that result from crimes being committed. This book discusses various restorative justice alternatives in response to crime. In the introductory chapter, the editor of this work describes the crime problem in America, the role of community in relation to crime, and nature of restorative justice as reciprocity. The next chapter of this work presents the moral and philosophical foundations of the restorative justice alternative, highlighting mediation and nonviolence conflict resolutions, community justice in non-European cultures, Biblical justice, and the roots of retribution. The following chapter defines what is meant by “community,â€? details community policing, and describes the role of the community and local governments in restorative justice and policing. Linking crime prevention to restorative justice is the focus of the next chapter. After detailing the reasons for the high failure rate of many crime prevention programs, this chapter concludes that restorative justice might be able to improve crime prevention programs. The next chapter compares four restorative conferencing models designed by the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention. Victim-offender mediation, community reparative boards, family group conferencing, and circle sentencing are described in detail and compared and contrasted in order to evaluate their successes. In the next chapter, the use of community conferencing to transform conflict is discussed, focusing on ways to turn conflict into cooperation. Abstract courtesy of National Criminal Justice Referece Service, www.ncjrs.org.