Real Justice. How we can revolutionize our response to wrongdoing

Source: (1997) Pipersville, PA: The Piper’s Press.

Ted Wachtel and his wife, Susan, founded the Community Service Foundation in Pennsylvania – a school and counseling agency for troubled youth – and REAL Justice – a program employing conferencing to bring together young offenders, victims, their respective supporters, and community members to try to resolve the harm of crime. Wachtel describes the origins, purposes, and processes of these programs for troubled young people. To illustrate key ideas and their development and implementation, he recounts his encounters with those who are pursuing similar efforts in New Zealand and Australia and elsewhere; and he relates real stories of youth crimes, their effects on individuals and communities, and attempts to deal with those crimes either through formal juvenile justice processes or through community-based informal processes such as conferencing. Particular topics discussed or illustrated in his book are conferencing, restorative justice, shame, the role and needs of victims, community, corrections, accountability for offenders, and the roles of government and the police in informal justice processes. Wachtel also advocates the extension of conferencing to spheres other than criminal justice, including schools, the workplace, and more.