Introduction.

Source: (2001) In Restorative community justice: Repairing harm and transforming communities, ed. Gordon Bazemore and Mara Schiff, 1-17. With an introduction by Gordon Bazemore and Mara Schiff. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co.

In this substantive introduction, Bazemore and Schiff begin by summarizing a number of examples of people, communities, and organizations in various countries responding to crime with a new value-based vision and practices. These examples point toward approaches to crime that can be grouped together in a broad movement that can be called restorative community justice. Restorative community justice represents a convergence of ideas and practices from both the restorative justice and community justice movements. Thus, restorative community justice focuses on crime as harm to individuals, communities, and relationships rather than as an offense against the state and its laws. It also focuses on the strengths of individuals and communities in resolving problems such as crime. The authors acknowledge that the idea of restorative community justice represents, at this point in time, a diverse and evolving array of practices and ideological emphases. Hence, they intend this book to explore both the diversity and the commonality of people and organizations involved in ideas and programs that can be generally grouped under a “tentâ€? they call “restorative community justice.â€?