Restorative Justice

Read this article, which describes the key differences between retributive and restorative justice. In social and political philosophy, there are traditionally two major types of justice: distributive justice describes how the status, wealth, and goods in society will be portioned out from the beginning, and retributive justice describes punishments, penalties, and restitution for situations where someone wrongs someone else and breaks a social contract. In recent years, retributive justice theory has been contrasted with restorative justice: retributive justice focuses on punishment and penalty, while restorative justice focuses on restitution and restoring community relationships.

8. In the media

In the media

Studies by Kelly M. Richards have shown that the general public would be open to the idea of alternative forms of justice, though only after the idea has been explicitly explained to them. According to other studies performed by Vicky De Mesmaecker, in order for restorative justice to become publicly accepted, there must be an effective public relations collaboration between the media and the criminologists.

The use of forgiveness as a tool has in the restorative justice programs, run for victims and perpetrators of Rwandan genocide, the violence in Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and Northern Ireland conflict, has also been documented in film, Beyond Right and Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness (2012). A tribal form of restorative justice is portrayed in the book Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen.

The 2017 Canadian documentary A Better Man follows a meeting between a woman who is recovering from domestic violence and the ex-partner.

Season 2 episode 5 of the NPR podcast Mindshift compares two schools that use restorative discipline practices, one that has already made the transition and one that is just beginning to use these practices. Peace Alliance hosts a twice weekly discussion forum on restorative justice called Restorative Justice on the Rise. There is public discussion about the restorative justice movement, as well as an archive of past discussions since January 27, 2019.

In July 2020 the BBC Radio 4 series The Punch followed the story of Jacob Dunne who, at the age of 18, threw a single punch in a drunken brawl outside a pub in Nottingham, England. His victim, James Hodgkinson, died in hospital nine days later and Dunne was convicted of manslaughter. Meeting face-to-face with the victim's parents had a profound impact on both parties, and the resulting relationship changed Dune's life in unexpected ways.