If We Were Serious about Public Safety, What Would It Look Like?

Source: (1999) Paper presented at the Building Strong Partnerships for Restorative Practices conference, Burlington, Vermont, 5-7 August 1999. Downloaded 8 June 2004.

Gorczyk argues that restorative justice offers better principles and practices to address public safety. Critical of our current criminal justice systems (which he sees as based on a “just desertsâ€? approach), he sketches a history of Western criminal justice from medieval times to the present to demonstrate how we got to our current system. In particular, he argues for a restorative justice based on a village model: a small group, female nurturing model, cognitive self-change in heterogeneous grouping, face-to-face problem-solving, acknowledgment of responsibility, making amends, repairing the damage, reconciliation and forgiveness. Thus, only by getting serious about community can we get serious about public safety.