Critical Issues in Restorative Justice

Source: (2004) Monsey, New York and Cullompton, Devon, UK: Criminal Justice Press and Willan Publishing.

As Howard Zehr and Barbara Toews point out, in just over two decades restorative justice has grown from a few experimental projects into a social movement and an identifiable field of study and practice. Zehr and Toews are long-term advocates and practitioners of restorative justice. Yet they acknowledge that all movements have unintended and unforeseen consequences, and all efforts to do good may go awry over time. This book, then, is intended to engage critical issues facing the field of restorative justice — critical issues being questions, forces, or directions that affect the integrity or overall trajectory of restorative justice. Zehr and Toews initiated the book by developing a set of critical questions. After refinement of the questions, they invited an international group of writers each to contribute a chapter on one or more of the critical issues. The contributors represent a wide geographical scope. Some are practitioners; some are academics. Some write from inside the field of restorative justice; some write from outside it. The main aspects of restorative justice covered in the book are these: principles and concepts; stakeholder issues; governments and systems; practice and practitioners; indigenous and religious traditions; and social justice. Each section of the book has a short introduction describing the scope of the topic and providing ways the reader may engage with the issues raised in the chapters.