What Is Restorative Justice

Balanced and Restorative Justice Training

• Restorative Justice Foundations and Principles

Introductions

• Name
• Where you are from/organization
• Why you are here

Questions Currently Asked

• Who committed the crime?
• What laws were broken?
• How will we punish the offender?
• Restorative Justice views the crime through a different lens.

Crime Is a wound

• Justice should be healing

Van Ness Principles

• If crime is more than lawbreaking, then:
• Justice requires that we work to heal victims, communities, and offenders who have been injured by crime.

2

• If crime is more than lawbreaking, then:
• Victims, communities and offenders should have opportunities for active involvement in the justice process as early and as fully as possible.

3

• If crime is more than lawbreaking, then:
• We must re-think the relative roles and responsibilities of the government and the community. Government is responsible for preserving a just order and the community for establishing a just peace.

Scales of Justice

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• Equilibrium Balance

The Crime

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• Offender

• Win

• Victim

• Lose

• Equilibrium Balance

Retributive Response

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• Offender

• Lose

• Victim

• Lose

• Equilibrium Balance

Restorative Response

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• Equilibrium Balance

• Offender

• Victim

Definitions

• 14

• “Restorative Justice is a process whereby the parties with a stake in a particular offense or harm come together to collectively resolve how to deal with the aftermath of the offense, repair the harm and its implications for the future.”

Restorative Justice …

• Is not a program.
• Is a mission or philosophical framework.
• Is a different way of responding to crime in communities and criminal justice systems.

Howard Zehr’s Questions

• What is the harm?
• What needs to be done to repair the harm?
• Who is responsible for this repair?

Shared Interest

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• Offender
• Interests

• Victim
• Interests

• Community
• Interests

• Victim/Offender/
• Community

Howard Zehr’s Questions #2

• What is the harm? (Assessment)
• What needs to be done to repair the harm? (Case Plan)
• Who is responsible for this repair? (Roles and Responsibilities)

Values

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• 1. Crime is an act against a person or the community, not ‘the state’.
• 2. Crime hurts the victims, the communities and the offenders.
• 3. Crime creates an obligation to make things right.
• 4. All parties should be a part of the response: - Victim (if he or she wishes). - Community. - Offender.

2

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• 5. The victim’s perspective is central to deciding how to repair the harm.
• 6. Offender accountability means accepting responsibility and acting to repair the harm.
• 7. The community must ensure that the process gives equal protection to all .
• 8. The offender takes primary responsibility for making things right.
• 9. Restoration replaces punishment for its own sake as the primary goal of criminal justice.

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• 10. Restitution is the rule, not the exception.
• 11. Results are measured by repair done, not amount and severity of punishment.
• 12. Controlling crime is mainly done by the community.
• 13. Offender is accountable for individual acts, community is accountable for conditions which contribute to crime.
• 14. Victims and offenders are full members of communities and participants in the process.

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Barry Stuart

• “Crime should never be the sole or even primary business of the state, if real differences are sought in the well-being of individuals, families, and communities. The structure, procedures, and evidentiary rules of the formal criminal justice process coupled with most justice officials’ lack of knowledge and connection to (the parties) affected by crime preclude the state from acting alone to achieve transformative change.”