Essay On Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is a wonderful thing and has been around for years, but it is just a new thing coming to the U.S. Restorative Justice has been used in countries in Europe and in South America. Restorative justice takes a different approach than the traditional justice system not only does it provide more help to the victims with closure it also helps the offenders right the wrong they have done and become a respectable law-abiding citizen. So many questions were being asked and not answered by the traditional justice system. Some of the questions that victims were asking were and scholars a like were: “Why are some so dissatisfied with how the criminal justice system treats them? Is it wrong when victims want to have a say in how the
police conduct the investigation, or how the prosecutor presents the case, or what sentence the judge gives the offender? Why isn’t it enough for them to sue the offender in civil court?” (Morris & Maxwell, 2001)These are all questions that the restorative justice system tries to answer.
South Africa has used the Restorative Justice system in their Juvenile system and has seen success with their juveniles not repeat offending or committing crimes. “The South African Cabinet has recently given approval for the introduction into Parliament of a Bill that will provide a new system to deal with child offenders.” (Skelton, 2002) Not only did the officers and the courts agree that restorative justice was a great idea, but their parliament agreed as well, and it became part of their law. A lot of scholars have argued that this is not an effective way of punishing since at the time of this article the South African government was only a seven-year-old democracy. They argued that you should be an established country before trying to change the justice system. Some scholars also said that it is a good thing to have restorative justice in the South African government because the African culture believes “that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.” (Skelton, 2002) But this way of thinking has also had an opposite reaction from the restorative justice perspective because the whole idea of restorative justice is to get everyone involved, the community, the victim, and the
offender. With this being said some of the people in the community to on the aspect of “it takes a village to punish a child” and took it up on themselves to punish them the way they saw fit. “Community members, frustrated with high levels of crime, begin to take the law into their own hands.
A report by the Restorative Justice Centre (a non-governmental organization based in Pretoria) records the findings of a field study off our incidents during the year 2000 in which children suspected of crimes were assaulted, degraded and in one instance, killed by community members taking the law into their own hands” (Skelton, 2002). So, if the Restorative Justice system is not used in the right way it can be abused and have a very bad outcome on the way people see restorative justice and the way people want justice. As you have read about the South African government using Restorative Justice to help Juveniles you see that it can be abused by people who misinterpret the way it is supposed to be used. “It is important to remember that this is a theory of justice that has grown out of experience. It has been informed by indigenous and customary responses to crime, both those of the past and those used today.” (Morris & Maxwell, 2001) As it is spelled out in this quote Restorative Justice is a thing that has grown out of experience and I believe that since they were a new democracy they did not have a good platform or base to make the restorative justice process work to its
full potential. In this study done by Michael J. Leiber he looked at what 3 different restorative justice programs focus on. These things were dialogue, relationship building, communication of moral values, restoration, and reparation. (Leiber) All of these are the basis of restorative justice; the dialogue and relationship building go almost hand and hand with each other. The mediator starts a dialogue and gets the victim and them offender talking so they can express how they feel and also start building a relationship. I wouldn’t say it would have to be a friendly relationship but one where the victim or the offender can easily express themselves and make the offender want to repair the damages and fix the relationship with the victim. I also kind of hit on the topic of moral values because dialogue and the relationship building both lead to where the victim and the offender can now express themselves and express their moral values to each other and realize the harm or the wrong the offender has committed. Once these steps have been covered that is when you hit the Restoration and Reparation stage. The Victim and the offender can restore the relationship and the offender can make reparation or pay back and fix the damages the he or she has caused the victim. The Prison Fellowship program also brings in the essence of restorative justice. It uses all the principles mentioned also help the offender’s families. They bring in the Christian faith and give the offenders a new hope and a way to turn their life around. “Prison Fellowship seeks to restore those affected by crime and incarceration by introducing prisoners, victims, and their families to a new hope available through Jesus Christ. We accomplish this by training and inspiring churches and communities—inside and outside of prison —to support the restoration of those affected by incarceration.” (Prison Fellowship corporation, 2017) They focus on the offender using restorative justice and by doing this they want to make things right with the victim because they now realize what they did was wrong, and they want to fix what they have done. These different programs are very good and can be used for good. But they can be abused and must be kept in check. Now there are always ways that restorative justice can’t work one of those ways is if the offender is not truly sorry for what he has done and then that is when the traditional criminal justice sets in. But when a victim and an offender come together, and the offender is truly sorry that is when we see restorative justice at its finest. “Restorative justice is not simply a way of reforming the criminal justice system; it is a way of transforming the entire legal system, our family lives, our conduct in the workplace, our practice of politics. Its vision is of a holistic change in the way we do justice in the world.” (Braithwaite, Balgoyen, & Rayford, n.d.)Restorative Justice is the future of the criminal justice system and when it is used to its full potential it can do wonderful things and reduce crime in a way we have never seen in this country.