Restorative Justice Serving the Need for Justice

Source: (2007) In Gabrielle Maxwell and James H. Liu, ed., Restorative Justice and Practices in New Zealand: Towards a Restorative Society. Wellington, NZ: Institute of Policy Studies, Pp. 265-273.

“Consequently, this chapter goes beyond the preception of justice deriving from the procedure and process of restorative justice, to consider the more fundamental need for justice that restorative justice serves. In so doing, it touches on the origin of the concept of justice as a necessity for community cohesion, and for comparative purposes it raises definitions of justice, morality and human needs. It mentions the reluctance of academic psychologists to enter the fray, except for Abraham Maslow, who came close to incorporating justice in his motivational framework of human behaviour. As a result, it restructures Maslow’s model slightly to incorporate justice more fully, and imposes a requirement for the ‘self-actualised’, at the supposed pinnacle fo mature pyschological development, to address the concerns of injustice under which some of the less fortunate members of society might labour. The chapter also raises the question of extending restorative justice from the domain of criminal justice to those of civil and social justice, and it touches on the different kind of orientation that mediators will require to make the extension work.” (Abstract)