Restorative Justice and Procedural Justice: Dealing with Rule Breaking.

Source: (2006) Journal of Social Issues. 62(2):307-326.

This article identifies similarities among three approaches to dealing with rule
breaking: the procedural justice model, the restorative justice model, and the
study of moral development. Each argues that the long-term goal when dealing
with rule breaking is to motivate rule breakers to become more self-regulating
in their future conduct. This goal is undermined by punishment-focused models
of sanctioning. Sanction-based models, which dominate current thinking about
managing criminals, have negative consequences for the individual wrongdoer
and for society. It is argued that greater focus needs to be placed on psychological
approaches whose goal is to connect with and activate internal values within
wrongdoers with the goal of encouraging self-regulatory law-related behavior in
the future. (author’s abstract)