Distributive Justice Theory

Each theory of justice has its own process and objective. As a result, the outcomes of crime differ. The purpose of this paper seeks to examine a crime through the lens of four theories of justice: retributive, utilitarian, restorative, and parallel. Moreover, the paper will elaborate more on each theory of justice, including the theory’s procedural and distributive justice, through its hypothetical application of a criminal case in Fairfax County, Virginia. These various theories of justice arose from how society should go about restoring the social contract. The social contract theory states that society has the obligation to restore the imbalance when one of society’s members breaks the social contract (Newmark, 2017). How one decides to
Due to this, the paper will apply the four theories listed to the Vanessa Pham crime in an attempt to view how each theory operates. Furthermore, the paper also seeks to choose the best theory to apply to this specific case by weighing the advantages and limitations that arise from the application of each theory of justice. (THESIS STATEMENT) Crime description. In the afternoon of June 27, 2010, an individual driving on Route 50 in Falls Church noticed a white vehicle in a ravine on the wrong side of a one-way road near Williams Drive (Jackman, 2010a). Firefighters and officers from the Fairfax police department arrived on the scene shortly thereafter; they found 19-year-old Vanessa Pham dead inside her vehicle (Jackman, 2010a; Jackman 2010b). Although there were a collection of surveillance video showing Pham minutes before her death, no tangible evidence was found to link someone to her murder until 2012 (Jouvenal and Williams, 2012). Fairfax police department managed to link Julio Miguel Blanco-Garcia to Pham’s murder in 2010 after a DNA match led authorities to Blanco-Garcia (Jouvenal & Williams,