Future of Restorative Justice

Restorative Justice

The most common form of criminal justice is retributive justice, which is based on an adversarial system that pits the offender against the victim (reviewed in Brownlee, 2010). In retributive justice, it is the offender's job, so to speak, to proclaim their innocence or diminish the seriousness of the offence. The state on behalf of the victim seeks to severely punish the victim through monetary penalties and prison terms. Both offender and victim are separated physically and emotionally from the very beginning of this process, once the offender has been identified and arrested. Retributive justice ignores the Aristotelian principle of responsible agency, because the offender is expected to combat any and all criminal charges.

In contrast, restorative justice seeks to mend the harm caused by the commission of a crime by encouraging the offender to accept responsibility for his or her actions (Brownlee, 2010)....
[ View Full Essay]