PHIL103: Moral and Political Philosophy

In system-wide offenses

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission shows how restorative justice can be used to address system-wide offenses that affect broad swaths of a group or a society.

In criminal cases

In criminal cases, victims can testify about the crime's impact upon their lives, receive answers to questions about the incident, and participate in holding the offender accountable. Meanwhile, offenders can tell their story of why the crime occurred and how it has affected their lives. They are given an opportunity to compensate the victim directly – to the degree possible. In criminal cases, this can include money, community service in general and/or specific to the offense, education to prevent recidivism, and/or expression of remorse.

A courtroom process might employ pretrial diversion, dismissing charges after restitution. In serious cases, a sentence may precede other restitution.

In the community, concerned individuals meet with all parties to assess the experience and impact of the crime. Offenders listen to victims' experiences, preferably until they are able to empathize with the experience. Then they speak to their own experience: how they decided to commit the offense. A plan is made for prevention of future occurrences, and for the offender to address the damage to the injured parties. All agree. Community members hold the offender(s) accountable for adherence to the plan.

While restorative justice typically involves an encounter between the offender and the victim, some organizations, such as the Mennonite Central Committee Canada, emphasize a program's values over its participants. This can include programs that only serve victims (or offenders for that matter), but that have a restorative framework. Indigenous groups are using the restorative justice process to try to create more community support for victims and offenders, particularly the young people. For example, different programs are underway at Kahnawake, a Mohawk reserve in Canada, and at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Oglala Lakota nation, within the United States.

In prisons

Besides serving as an alternative to civil or criminal trial, restorative justice is also thought to be applicable to offenders who are currently incarcerated. The purpose of restorative justice in prisons is to assist with the prisoner's rehabilitation, and eventual reintegration into society. By repairing the harm to the relationships between offenders and victims, and offenders and the community that resulted from the crime, restorative justice seeks to understand and address the circumstances which contributed to the crime. This is thought to prevent recidivism (that is, that the offender repeats the undesirable behavior) once the offender is released.

Research of a restorative reentry planning circle process in Hawai‘i showed reduced residivism that controlled for the self-selection bias that often is difficult to overcome in restorative practices research. The reentry planning circle process was also shown to help children, whose incarcerated parents had one, address the trauma they suffered from losing a parent to prison.

The potential for restorative justice to reduce recidivism is one of the strongest and most promising arguments for its use in prisons. However, there are both theoretical and practical limitations, which can make restorative justice infeasible in a prison environment. These include: difficulty engaging offenders and victims to participate in mediation; the controversial influence of family, friends, and the community; and the prevalence of mental illness among prisoners.

In social work

In social work cases, impoverished victims such as foster children are given the opportunity to describe their future hopes and make concrete plans to transition out of state custody in a group process with their supporters. In social justice cases, restorative justice is used for problem solving.

In schools

Restorative justice has also been implemented in schools. It uses a similar model to programs used by the criminal justice system. Restorative practices can "also include preventive measures designed to build skills and capacity in students as well as adults". Some examples of preventive measures in restorative practices might include teachers and students devising classroom expectations together or setting up community building in the classroom. Restorative justice also focuses on justice as needs and obligations, expands justice as conversations between the offender, victim and school, and recognizes accountability as understanding the impact of actions and repairing the harm. In this approach, teachers, students and the community can reach agreements to meet all stakeholders’ needs. Collectivity is emphasized as the group must create an action plan to heal the harm and find a way to bring the offender back into the community.

While the focus is in making the victim(s) whole, the added benefit of restorative justice programs are a reduction in disciplinary actions such as suspensions and expulsions, and more effective reformative and/or reconciliatory actions imposed, such as writing apology letters, performing community service or- for example, in cases of bullying- composing a research paper on the negative effects of bullying. This approach develops and fosters empathy, as participating parties must come to understand the needs of all stakeholders in order for the conflict to be fully rectified. Both the offending party and the wronged/victimized party can address and begin to resolve their obstacles to achieving their education, with the aid of the restorative justice partners. Behavioral problems stemming from grief, for example, may be recognized and acknowledged within restorative justice programs; as a result, the party would be referred to a counselor to receive grief counseling. By approaching student discipline with restorative justice in the forefront, conflicts may be resolved to meet the funding needs of the school district- by way of reduced student absenteeism, rehabilitate the offending party, and to restore justice and make whole the wronged party. Collectivity and empathy are further developed by having students participate in restorative justice circles in administering roles such as mediators or jurors.