The Little Book of Restorative Justice
by Howard ZehrDescription| Excerpt | Table of Contents | Back Cover | About the Author | Order via Amazon (english) | Order via Amazon (spanish)
Vengeance and bitter violence have had their turns—without redemptive results.
How should we as a society respond to wrongdoing? When a crime occurs or an injustice is done, what needs to happen? What does justice require?
Howard Zehr, known worldwide for his pioneering work in transforming our understandings of justice, here proposes workable Principles and Practices for making restorative justice both possible and useful.
First he explores how restorative justice is different from criminal justice.
Then, before letting those appealing observations drift out of reach, into theoretical space, Zehr presents Restorative Justice Practices.
Zehr undertakes a massive and complex subject and puts it in graspable form, without reducing or trivializing it.
This is a handbook, a vehicle for moving our society toward healing and wholeness. This is a sourcebook, a starting point for handling brokenness with hard work and hope.
This resource is also suitable for academic classes and workshops, for conferences and trainings.
By the author of Changing Lenses; Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims; and Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences.
1. An Overview
How should we as a society respond to wrongdoing? When a crime occurs or an injustice is done, what needs to happen? What does justice require?
For North Americans, the urgency of these questions has been intensified by the traumatic events of September 11, 2001. The debate is an old one, though, and is truly international in scope.
Whether we are concerned with crime or other offenses, the Western legal system has profoundly shaped our thinking about these issues—not only in the Western world, but in much of the rest of the world as well.
The Western legal, or criminal justice, system’s approach to justice has some important strengths. Yet there is also a growing acknowledgment of this system’s limits and failures. Victims, offenders, and community members often feel that justice does not adequately meet their needs. Justice professionals—judges, lawyers, prosecutors, probation and parole officers, prison staff—frequently express a sense of frustration as well. Many feel that the process of justice deepens societal wounds and conflicts rather than contributing to healing or peace.
Restorative justice is an attempt to address some of these needs and limitations. Since the 1970s, a variety of programs and approaches have emerged in thousands of communities and many countries throughout the world. Often these are offered as choices within or alongside the existing legal system. Starting in 1989, however, New Zealand has made restorative justice the hub of its entire juvenile justice system.
In many places today, restorative justice is considered a sign of hope and the direction of the future. Whether it will live up to this promise remains to be seen.
Restorative justice began as an effort to deal with burglary and other property crimes that are usually viewed (often incorrectly) as relatively minor offenses. Today, however, restorative approaches are available in some communities for the most severe forms of criminal violence: death from drunken driving, assault, rape, even murder. Building upon the experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, efforts are also being made to apply a restorative justice framework to situations of mass violence.
These approaches and practices are also spreading beyond the criminal justice system to schools, to the workplace, and to religious institutions. Some advocate the use of restorative approaches such as “circles” (a particular practice that emerged from First Nation communities in Canada) as a way to work through, resolve, and transform conflicts in general. Others pursue circles or “conferences” (an effort with roots both in New Zealand and Australia, and in facilitated victim-offender meetings) as a way to build and heal communities. Kay Pranis, a prominent restorative justice advocate, calls circles a form of participatory democracy that moves beyond simple majority rule (see pages 50-51 for a fuller explanation of circles as understood in the restorative justice field).
In societies where Western legal systems have replaced and/or suppressed traditional justice and conflict-resolution processes, restorative justice is providing a framework to reexamine and sometimes reactivate these traditions.
Although the term “restorative justice” encompasses a variety of programs and practices, at its core it is a set of principles, a philosophy, an alternate set of guiding questions. Ultimately, restorative justice provides an alternative framework for thinking about wrongdoing. I will explore that framework in the pages that follow, and look at how it could be put to use.
Why this Little Book?
In this Little Book, I do not try to make the case for restorative justice. Nor do I explore the many implications of this approach. Rather, I intend this book to be a brief description or overview—the Cliff Notes, if you will, of restorative justice. Although I will outline some of the programs and practices of restorative justice, my focus in this book is especially the principles or philosophy of restorative justice.
The Little Book of Restorative Justice is for those who have heard the term and are curious about what it implies. It is also for those who are involved in the field but are becoming unclear or losing track of what they are trying to do. I hope to help bring clarity about where the restorative justice “train” should be headed and, in some cases, to nudge the train back onto the track.
Such an effort is important at this time. Like all attempts at change, restorative justice has sometimes lost its way as it has developed and spread. With more and more programs being termed “restorative justice,” the meaning of that phrase is sometimes diluted or confused. Under the inevitable pressures of working in the real world, restorative justice has sometimes been subtly co-opted or diverted from its principles.
The victim advocacy community has been especially concerned about this. Restorative justice claims to be victim-oriented, but is it really? All too often, victim groups fear, restorative justice efforts have been motivated mainly by a desire to work with offenders in a more positive way. Like the criminal system it aims to improve or replace, restorative justice may become primarily a way to deal with offenders.
Others wonder whether the field has adequately addressed offender needs and made sufficiently restorative efforts. Do restorative justice programs give adequate support to offenders to carry out their obligations and to change their patterns of behavior? Do the programs adequately address the harms that may have led offenders to become who they are? Are such programs becoming just another way to punish offenders under a new guise? And what about the community at large? Is it being adequately encouraged to be involved and to assume its obligations to victims, to offenders, and to its members in general?
Our past experience with change efforts in the justice arena warns us that sidetracks and diversions inevitably happen in spite of our best intentions. If advocates for change are unwilling to acknowledge and address these likely diversions, their efforts may end up much different than they intended. In fact, “improvements” can turn out to be worse than the conditions that they were designed to reform or replace.
One of the most important safeguards we can exert against such sidetracks is to give attention to core principles. If we are clear about principles, if we design our programs with principles in mind, if we are open to being evaluated by these principles, we are much more likely to stay on track.
Put another way, the field of restorative justice has grown so rapidly and in so many directions that it is sometimes difficult to know how to move into the future with integrity and creativity. Only a clear vision of principles and goals can provide the compass we need as we find our way along a path that is inevitably winding and unclear.
This book is an effort to articulate the restorative justice concept in straightforward terms. However, I must acknowledge certain limits to the framework I will lay out here. I am often considered one of the founding developers and advocates of this field. Even though I have tried hard to remain critical and open, I come with bias in favor of this ideal. Moreover, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, I write from my own “lens,” and that is shaped by who I am: a white, middle-class male of European ancestry, a Christian, a Mennonite. This biography and these, as well as other, interests necessarily shape my voice and vision.
Even though there is somewhat of a consensus within the field about the broad outline of the principles of restorative justice, not all that follows is uncontested. What you read here is my understanding of restorative justice. It must be tested against the voices of others.
Finally, I’ve written this book within a North American context. The terminology, the issues raised, even the way the concept is formulated, reflect to some extent the realities of my setting. I hope that this book will be useful for others, as well, but it may require some translation for other contexts.
With this background and qualifications, then, what is “restorative justice”? So many misconceptions have grown up around the term that I find it increasingly important to first clarify what, in my view, restorative justice is not.
© Good Books, Intercourse, PA 17534
1. An Overview 3
Why this Little Book? 5
Restorative justice is not . . . 8
Restorative justice is concerned 13
about needs and roles2. Restorative Principles 19
Three pillars of restorative justice 22
The “who” and the “how” are important 25
Restorative justice aims to put things right 28
A restorative lens 32
Defining restorative justice 36
The goals of restorative justice 37
Guiding questions of restorative justice 38
Signposts of restorative justice 403. Restorative Practices 42
Core approaches often involve an encounter 44
Models differ in the “who” and the “how” 47
Models differ in their goals 52
A restorative continuum 544. Is It Either/Or? 58
Retributive justice vs. restorative justice? 58
Criminal justice vs. restorative justice? 59
Restorative justice is a river 61Appendix I: Fundamental Principles of Restorative Justice 64
Endnotes 70
Selected Readings 72
About the Author 76
“How should we as a society respond to wrongdoing? When a crime occurs or an injustice is done, what needs to happen? What does justice require?
“Victims, offenders, and community members often feel that justice does not adequately meet their needs. Justice professionals frequently express frustration as well.
“Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible.”— from The Little Book of Restorative Justice
Howard Zehr, known worldwide for his pioneering work in transforming our understandings of justice, here proposes workable Principles and Practices for making restorative justice both possible and useful.
Zehr is the author of the formative work, Changing Lenses, and of the photo-essay books Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims; and Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences.
Howard Zehr has been called the grandfather of restorative justice. He directed the first victim offender conferencing program in the U.S. and is one of the developers of restorative justice as a concept. His book Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice is considered a classic in the field. His many other publications include Doing Life: Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences and Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims.
Dr. Zehr is co-director of the graduate Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, Virginia). From this base he also teaches and practices in the field of restorative justice. Zehr received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Rutgers University.
© Good Books, Intercourse, PA 17534
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