Restorative justice and the criminological enterprise

Source: (2006) In, Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft editors, “Handbook of Restorative Justice” A Global Perspective. London and New York: Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group pp.439-449

The core assumptions of a positivistic criminology, that it is possible (and desirable) to ‘explain’ crime objectively, has been questioned. Indeed, especially from the late 1960s on, a variety of criminological perspectives and approaches emerged that challenged this assumption, and many other dimensions of mainstream criminology. The restorative justice approach was importantly rooted in these alternative criminological approaches, which are considered more fully further on. (excerpt)