The Virtues of Restorative Processes, the Vices of “Restorative Justice”

Source: (2003) Utah Law Review. 2003(1): 375-388. University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Downloaded 13 October 2003.

In this article, Paul Robinson distinguishes restorative processes from restorative justice. To him, restorative processes refer to such practices as victim-offender mediation, sentencing circles, and family group conferences – to name but a few of the most common such processes. Restorative justice, however, goes beyond those types of processes to pursue a much more ambitious agenda. Robinson characterizes it as an anti-justice agenda, and he remarks that frontline practitioners of restorative processes do not necessarily share a restorative justice agenda. He argues in this paper that restorative processes can and should be used more widely in ways consistent with doing justice, and that proponents of restorative justice should publicly disavow the anti-justice agenda of the restorative justice movement.