Restorative Justice

Question 1

Intro

Answer 1

Restorative justice was developed as an alternative method to traditional methods of punishment.

Question 2

Restorative justice fulfils two key aims of custodial sentencing

Answer 2

Restorative justice fulfils two key aims of custodial sentencing. The first involves rehabilitation of offenders. For example restorative justice encourages the criminal except responsibility for their actions, the aim is that when offenders fully understand how their actions have negatively affected and impacted their victims they will have the chance to develop empathy and their ability to take the perspective of the victim, the second component is atonement for wrongdoing (retribution). This involves psychological atonement for example the offender showing feelings of guilt and remorse. 

Question 3

Who is involved?

Answer 3

In order for a start of justice to work research is propose that the starting point should be on the relationship rather than the punishment. Most crimes harm people and therefore justice requires the harm to be healed as much as possible. Early models focused on their fenders and victim, only but recent ideas suggest that there are three stakeholders; victim reparation communities of care and reconciliation and offender responsibility. 

Question 4

Not always a face to face interation

Answer 4

Although we start of justice aims to get the victim and the offender to interact and reconcile this is not always the case. Instead this variations of contact that can be used between the victim and offender for example letters phone calls can be used to help reconciliation as well as other message methods, such as financial restitution to the victim that may reflect the psychological harm done. For example, if there was a victim of theft, the offender would pay for the physical damages of the breaking.