Restorative Justice: short introduction and bibliography

What is restorative justice? New Zealand was the first nation to consider the interests of the victim, offender, and community in their court system. They called it "Restorative Justice" (RJ) and focused on healing the suffering of a victim of harm at the hands of another human, the offender, through the intervention of the community rather than a court of law. They held this in contrast to the system of retributive justice, which focused on determining what laws of the state were broken, who broke them, and what punishment could be dealt to the offender..."breaking" that person, as it were.

In retributive justice, the state considers itself harmed by the offense; after all, its laws had been broken. Restorative Justice recognizes three key parties to any crime: the offender, victim, and community in which the crime took place. Retributive justice seeks only to punish the offender. RJ seeks to help the victim recover for the harm done through a negotiated settlement in which the victim, the offender, and the community all take part. In order for RJ to work, the offender must confess, listen to the victim's "lament," and agree to a solution set forth by all three parties. In order to serve the needs of the three parties, the justice system needs to be dedicated to restoration, healing, responsibility, and prevention.

In our society, in which the punishments are most severe of all the Western nations and the recidivism rate is the highest, Restorative Justice carries the greatest promise of reducing the incarceration and recidivism rates. Indeed, in 1997, the state courts of the United States of America began to identify RJ as a major trend.

Today, a plethora of sources of information about RJ graces the Internet. The following list comes from these sources and comprises the resources for an essay Ken Hamilton wrote in November, 2000 for a study and discussion group of which he is a member. (Click here for Ken's essay)

The bibliographic references are all in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. If you do not have a copy of the Acrobat Reader, it is a free download from Adobe by clicking on this button:

These are all copyrighted materials that are available to anyone as long as they are not edited and credit is given to the author. Some of them were originally downloaded in Microsoft Word format, and were converted to the pdf format without any editing. It is hoped that parties interested in RJ will find them useful. There's lots more on the web; the initial articles were found at sites listed in the first three pages of a Google search for Restorative Justice.

This list was created on 8/22/2001 with the sole intention to introduce the reader to this large subject. Any additions will be added with their date of addition, so visitors can keep track of their own use of the list. For current articles, I encourage the reader to do a Google search.

8/24/01

Strang, Heather: Restorative Justice Programs in Australia

8/27/01

8/30/01

Justice Policy Institute-Report on violence in schools and the use of suspensions

2/11/02

3/8/03

Porter, Thos. W: Restorative Justice: Justice as Peacebuilding

Page last edited 04/13/2007