Sometimes in restorative justice we use the metaphor of “healing.†One critique of the healing metaphor is that it may promise too much. Another is that it is a medical metaphor, and medical metaphors for crime during an earlier rehabilitation era led to some unfortunate consequences. Like all metaphors, it highlights certain characteristics or goals, but like all metaphors, it is also likely to hide or mislead.
The restoration image in restorative justice itself is a metaphor. t is a metaphor that communicates and resonates, which may account in part for the popularity of the term and concept. But the resonance of the metaphor also helps to account for the growing misuse of the term. And like all metaphors, “restorative†is bound to hide and mislead.
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