Balanced and Restorative Justice: Prospects for Juvenile Justice in the 21st Century

Source: (2004) In, Albert R. Roberts, ed., Juvenile Justice Sourcebook: Past, Present, and Future. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 467-507.

The proposed model is based in the perspective that mutual responsibility between the individual and society is the essence of community. Crime, particularly juvenile crime, involves a failure to fulfill this responsibility, usually involving failure by both society and the youth. An effective model for reducing juvenile crime would therefore be one that emphasizes and facilitates mutual responsibility as the central component for interrupting cycles of isolation and conflict among community members while making both juveniles and the community accountable for the failures that contributed to the crime at issue. The proposed balanced approach for reducing juvenile crime involves the promotion of community protection, accountability, and competency development, and it requires participation by victims, offending juveniles, and representatives of the community. Abstract courtesy of National Criminal Justice Reference Service, www.ncjrs.org.