Repositioning Restorative Justice

Source: (2003) Devon, UK: Willan Publishing.

In the last twenty or so years, restorative justice has moved from a position of obscurity to widespread recognition in criminological and criminal justice contexts. As part of this growth, a great many conferences around the world – from small to large, from local to international – have been conducted to examine and explore restorative justice. One series of conferences has been organized by an International Network for Research on Restorative Justice for Juveniles. The network consists of a number of prominent scholars and practitioners in restorative justice and juvenile justice from around the world. This book represents a second collection of papers stemming from the network’s fifth conference in this series, a conference held in Leuven, Belgium, September 16-19, 2001. (The first collection was published as Restorative Justice and the Law, 2002.) With more than 200 participants from 26 countries, and more than 70 papers presented and discussed, one of the themes of the conference was “repositioning restorative justice.â€? This theme points to two aspects of the current state of restorative justice. One is satisfaction or confidence in the value and feasibility of restorative justice. The other is concern for misunderstandings and even misuses of restorative justice, whether with respect to critics or advocates. Hence, the chapters in this book, written by a variety of experts and based on papers from the conference, cover these broad but significant subjects: principles of restorative justice; evaluation of restorative practices; the scope of restorative approaches; and the application of restorative justice in different countries.