The Politics of Restorative Justice


Book Description

This book invites the reader to reconsider restorative justice and its politics. Through an examination of restorative themes, theories and practices, three distinct ways in which politics affect restorative justice are explored. First, restorative justice is situated in a context in which political actors, as well as structural forces, either enable or obstruct its practice. Second, restorative justice is understood as a contributor to political power in that its practice helps govern individual and collective behaviour. Finally, restorative justice is described as a social movement requiring an enabling politics that will allow it to promote a justice that does more than affirm the status quo - it must aspire toward a transformative politics concerned with class-based, gendered, racialized and other injustices. Andrew Woolford is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba. He is author of Between Justice and Certainty: Treaty Making in British Columbia (2005) and co-author of Informal Reckonings: Conflict Resolution in Mediation, Restorative Justice, and Reparations (with R.S. Ratner, 2008). Book jacket.




Restoring Justice


Book Description

Restoring Justice: An Introduction to Restorative Justice offers a clear and convincing explanation of restorative justice, a movement within criminal justice with growing worldwide influence. It explores the broad appeal of this new vision and offers a brief history of its development. The book presents a theoretical foundation for the principles and values of restorative justice and develops its four cornerpost ideas of encounter, amends, inclusion and reintegration. After exploring how restorative justice ideas and values may be integrated into policy and practice, it presents a series of key issues commonly raised about restorative justice, summarizing various perspectives on each.




Understanding Criminal Justice


Book Description

Few subjects provoke as much public fascination and political concern as crime, criminality, criminology, and criminal justice policy and practice. Understanding Criminal Justice seeks to provide students with a critical introduction to the range of theoretical, policy and operational issues faced by the criminal justice system in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It anticipates little or no prior knowledge of criminal justice, and seeks to provide an introduction to the area. This critical textbook provides both a thorough overview of the procedures central to the workings of the criminal justice system and a distillation of the topical debates that surround it. It outlines the political and historical context, detailing key procedures and challenging students to engage with current debates. Containing chapters on policing, prosecution, community justice and alternative modes of justice, this text provides a comprehensive coverage of the key topics included within undergraduate criminology programmes at an introductory level. Written in a lively and accessible style, this book will also be of interest to general readers and practitioners in the criminal justice system.







Routledge International Handbook of Restorative Justice


Book Description

This up-to-date resource on restorative justice theory and practice is the literature’s most comprehensive and authoritative review of original research in new and contested areas. Bringing together contributors from across a range of jurisdictions, disciplines and legal traditions, this edited collection provides a concise, but critical review of existing theory and practice in restorative justice. Authors identify key developments, theoretical arguments and new empirical evidence, evaluating their merits and demerits, before turning the reader’s attention to further concerns informing and improving the future of restorative justice. Divided into four parts, the Handbook includes papers written by leading scholars on new theory, empirical evidence of implementation, critiques and the future of restorative justice. This companion is essential reading for scholars of restorative justice, criminology, social theory, psychology, law, human rights and criminal justice, as well as researchers, policymakers, practitioners and campaigners from around the world.




Restorative Justice


Book Description

'The book embodies a timely collection of restorative justice topics and is well structured with some of the most learned authorities in the field' - Magistrate 'The team which teaches the Open University's Crime Order and Social Control course has long been publishing teaching materials which are gratefully purloined by colleagues elsewhere for use in their own courses. In producing this book they have gone much further than this: not only have they selected an indispensable range of mainly previously published readings, they have also placed them in a theoretical context and succinctly summarised the debates which are taking place and some which need to take place but as yet are in their infancy' - Vista Restorative Justice brings together key international writings that trace the development of restorative justice from its diverse beginnings to current global policies and practices. The collection is constructed around the following themes:the theoretical origins of restorative justice; the key principles and substantive practices associated with restorative justice; controversial issues and debates; and future directions and possibilities. A substantial editorial introduction will provide readers with an authorative guide to the critical issues facing restorative justice at the beginning of the 21st century.




Punishment


Book Description

Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policymakers. Why should we punish criminals? Which theory of punishment is most compelling? Is the death penalty ever justified? These questions and many more are examined in this highly engaging and accessible guide. Punishment is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment, offering a new and refreshing approach that will benefit readers of all backgrounds and interests. The first comprehensive critical guide to examine all leading contemporary theories of punishments, this book explores – among others – retribution, the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice and the unified theory of punishment. Thom Brooks applies these theories to several case studies in detail, including capital punishment, juvenile offending and domestic violence. Punishment highlights the problems and prospects of different approaches in order to argue for a more pluralistic and compelling perspective that is novel and ground-breaking. This second edition has extensive revisions and updates to all chapters, including an all-new chapter on the unified theory substantively redrafted and new chapters on cyber-crimes and social media as well as corporate crimes. Punishment is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, criminal justice, criminology, justice studies, law, political science and sociology.




Restorative Justice and Contemporary Political Theory


Book Description

Outlining an original analysis of the political dimension of restorative justice, this book seeks both to enhance the critical comprehension of this phenomenon and to forge new tools for acting politically through restorative justice, inviting restorative justice scholars, practitioners and advocates to become a radical political movement. Restorative justice is widely studied, nationally and internationally legislated, and increasingly practised; however, the growth of relevant policy, practice and research has been only marginally accompanied by the development of updated, theoretically informed and critical reflections on the relationships between politics and restorative justice. This is a significant problem since neglecting the political dimension may limit the capacity of the restorative justice movement to critically appreciate its possible role in confronting oppressive social and political arrangements. This book addresses this gap by providing reflections on restorative justice in relation to six complex political concepts – difference, sovereignty, community, identity, equality and subalternity. Engaging with the thoughts of Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, each chapter works as a prism to unravel and reconstruct creatively restorative justice unearthing its political conditions and effects. Providing an innovative contribution to our thinking about the political nature and significance of restorative justice from the specific perspective of political theory, Restorative Justice and Contemporary Political Theory will appeal to both students and scholars of restorative justice specifically and of criminal justice and criminology more broadly.




Until We Reckon


Book Description

The award-winning “radically original” (The Atlantic) restorative justice leader, whose work the Washington Post has called “totally sensible and totally revolutionary,” grapples with the problem of violent crime in the movement for prison abolition A National Book Foundation Literature for Justice honoree A Kirkus “Best Book of 2019 to Fight Racism and Xenophobia” Winner of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Journalism Award Finalist for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice In a book Democracy Now! calls a “complete overhaul of the way we’ve been taught to think about crime, punishment, and justice,” Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice and renowned expert on violence, offers pragmatic solutions that take the place of prison, meeting the needs of survivors and creating pathways for people who have committed violence to repair harm. Critically, Sered argues that reckoning is owed not only on the part of individuals who have caused violence, but also by our nation for its overreliance on incarceration to produce safety—at a great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy. Although over half the people incarcerated in America today have committed violent offenses, the focus of reformers has been almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Called “innovative” and “truly remarkable” by The Atlantic and “a top-notch entry into the burgeoning incarceration debate” by Kirkus Reviews, Sered’s Until We Reckon argues with searing force and clarity that our communities are safer the less we rely on prisons and jails as a solution for wrongdoing. Sered asks us to reconsider the purposes of incarceration and argues persuasively that the needs of survivors of violent crime are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends in ways that are meaningful to those they have hurt—none of which happens in the context of a criminal trial or a prison sentence.




The Restorative Justice Ritual


Book Description

Restorative justice is an innovative approach to responding to crime and conflict that shifts the focus away from laws and punishment to instead consider the harm caused and what is needed to repair that harm and make things right. Interest in restorative justice is rapidly expanding, with new applications continuously emerging around the world. The restorative philosophy and conference process have shown great promise in providing a justice response that heals individuals and strengthens the community. Still, a few key questions remain unanswered. First, how is the personal and relational transformation apparent in the restorative justice process achieved? What can be done to safeguard and enhance that effectiveness? Second, can restorative justice satisfy the wider public’s need for a reaffirmation of communal norms following a crime, particularly in comparison to the criminal trial? And finally, given its primary focus on making amends at an interpersonal level, does restorative justice routinely fail to address larger, structural injustices? This book engages with these three critical questions through an understanding of restorative justice as a ritual. It proffers three dominant ritual functions related to the performance of justice: the normative, the transformative, and the proleptic. Two justice rituals, namely, the criminal trial and the restorative justice conference, are examined through this framework in order to understand how each process fulfills, or fails to fulfill, the multifaceted human need for justice. The book will be of interest to students, academics, and practitioners working in the areas of Restorative Justice, Criminal Law, and Criminology.