Institutionalizing Restorative Justice

Abstract

There is no shortage of writings on restorative justice. Indeed, it seems sometimes that there is more energy put into writing about it than actually doing it. While restorative justice as a justice practice attracts oodles of advocates and scholars and much commentary about its supposed unstoppable spread, there has not actually been very much extensively institutionalized in its most recent manifestation. In its (mostly) European identity as mediation, it continues much as it always did, largely untouched by the enthusiasms and sometimes extravagant claims made about it in the (mostly) New World. In its newer form—family group conferencing, restorative conferencing, circle sentencing—it often clings to a limited role, deemed suitable for children, not grown-ups, for trivial crimes, not serious ones, for ‘soft’ circumstances, not difficult ones. As well, where it has been institutionalized, it has sometimes fallen victim to the tribulations attached to any bright idea that has been routinized and had the edges rubbed off it by practitioners just doing their job instead of being energized by commitment to radical reinvention. So, a book that addresses the principle of institutionalizing restorative justice, along with the difficulties inherent in the enterprise, is welcome indeed.

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