Restorative Punishment and Punitive Restoration

Abstract

My thesis can be stated quite simply. Our responses to crime should aim for ‘restoration’, for ‘restorative justice’: but the kind of restoration that criminal wrongdoing makes necessary is properly achieved through a process of retributive punishment. To put it the other way round, offenders should suffer retribution, punishment, for their crimes: but the essential purpose of such punishment should be to achieve restoration. To put it yet more simply, my slogan is ‘Restoration through retribution’. That thesis sets me in opposition to advocates of restorative justice, and to those critics of restorative justice who argue for a ‘just deserts’ retributivism.

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