Source: (2009) Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice. 1(1): 115-162.
The aim of this paper is not merely an exploration of the
practice of restorative justice, but rather an examination of the radical re-visioning of
criminal justice specifically and legal discourse generally toward which restorative justice
gestures. Restorative justice imagines, and seeks to bring about, a system of justice
which is responsive to the vicissitudes and dynamism that characterize individual
experiences of crime. In order to do this, it re-imagines what the priorities of a system of
criminal justice should be by inverting the priorities of traditional legal discourse.
Whereas the traditional Western legal discourses of justice theory and utilitarianism, or
efficiency, emphasize the so-called public interests triggered by crime, restorative justice
emphasizes the private interests that go largely unaddressed in the criminal justice system
as it exists today. (Excerpt)
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