“Reason and emotion in restorative justice.”

Source: (2000) Lecture transcript, 5 July. New Zealand Institute for Dispute Resolution. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington.

Luna, an American associate professor of law and a visiting lecturer in Victoria University’s Faculty of Law, surveys the range of debate on restorative justice in New Zealand. New Zealand has an operational model of restorative justice in its juvenile justice system, and it continues to debate the extension of this approach to the adult justice system. Acknowledging the highly emotional character of crime and of this debate, Luna argues for application of a rational framework for evaluating and structuring a sanctioning scheme. Toward this end, Luna sketches punishment philosophy, restorative justice theory on sanctioning, and the prerequisites and stages for a successful restorative approach to criminal punishment. He then applies the resulting standard to the traditional models of juvenile justice and to a recently developed model exemplified by family group conferencing in New Zealand. His aim in rationally examining sanctioning theory and practice is to reveal the advantages of restorative justice in sanctioning and in dealing with the emotions evoked by crime.