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Wright, Martin. Mobilizing the community for crime prevention.Paper to international conference on ‘The role of community restorative justice centres in the juvenile justice system’, Ukrainian Centre for Common Ground, Kyiv, 19-20 April 2007.

This paper will discuss some of these questions, and suggest the role of restorative justice in answering them. First it will consider restorative approaches in schools and in the community, and their contribution to the reduction of harm. Then it will consider how restorative justice can be used at various stages of the process when harm, or crime, has taken place, and the community’s role in this. Finally it will return to the question of prevention. (excerpt)

Wright, Martin. Quanto è riparatrice la giustizia riparatrice?

Ci sono certe cose che diamo per scontate: 1) che il crimine è un’offesa contro lo stato 2) che le persone che commettono i reati dovrebbero essere punite 3) che la punizione è una responsabilità e un monopolio dello stato 4) che le decisioni su come trattare gli autori di reato dovrebbero essere prese dai funzionari statali mediante un processo legale formale.

Wright, Martin. The role of the community in applying restorative justice. Paper to international conference ‘Introduction of restorative justice in Ukraine: results and perspectives.' Kyiv, 20-21 April 2006.

A distinctive feature of restorative justice, and especially conferencing, is that members of the community, including relatives and friends of the victim and the offender, can be involved in the process itself. This can also have advantages which the conventional justice system does not offer. Safeguards are however needed. In some ways the conferencing process itself is an informal safeguard, because it encourages people to speak up for themselves if they feel that something is not fair. This in turn depends on the facilitators , who also need to be supervised. Formal safeguards should also be in place; in keeping with restorative principles they should include an offer of mediation at an early stage. (excerpt)

Yaacob, Hakimah. Restorative justice and Prison Industry: Proposed Waqf-Based Model for creation of victim’s fund

The Government spends more than RM30 per day for every prisoner and as to date, we have 40,000 prisoners around Malaysia. Even though the cost incurred is extremely high (RM511,100,000 annually), the crime rate continues to rise. The problem with the system nowadays is too much focus is rendered upon the offences committed by the concerned individuals and the rehabilitation of their behavior, rather than restoring the position of the crime victims back to their status quo, which would also be a move that is prudent and in line with universal humanistic objectives. The lack of self consciousness and accountability towards the crime, which is structured by the prison system itself means that at the moment, the system is not the best option with regard to preserving social justice. A theory that is founded upon responsibility and accountability has the potential to be an effective mechanism of to reduce the national crime rate. As a result, the Government’s expenditure and the cost of crime can be reduced. (author's abstract)

Yav Katshung, Joseph. 2008. Truth Commissions and Prosecutions: 
Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Truth commissions have been multiplying rapidly around the world and gaining increasing attention in recent years. They are proposed for different reasons and driven by diverse motives. They can be used firstly, for the purpose of national reconciliation and in the interests of the society; secondly, sometimes they can be used to avoid accountability or prosecution and merely to shield an offender from justice. It is important to look at their relationship to prosecutions and justice in an immediate and historical sense. Are TRC's designed to generate more truth, more justice, reparations, and genuine institutional reform? Or are they designed to undermine the State’s and society’s legal, ethical and political obligations to their people? This gives us opportunity to share views on adequate truth commissions and their relationship with prosecutions. (excerpt)

Zehr, Howard. Restorative Justice Signposts

Identifies indicators to help people discern when they are working toward restorative justice in responding to crime.

Zellerer, Evelyn. (2004). Dangerous dichotomies: The potential for restorative justice to resolve feminist dilemmas.

This article explores dilemmas that have emerged from my work on gender, culture, violence, and justice. I examine feminist positions regarding, first, violence against women and, secondly, female offenders. The summary of feminist perspectives reveals that feminists are simultaneously supporting and rebelling against the current punitive approach to crime. A major source of the problem is dichotomous thinking in terms of: the interests of victims versus the interests of offenders; the experiences of girls/women versus the experiences of boys/men; and state intervention versus community intervention. I argue that restorative justice has the potential to overcome dichotomous thinking and to resolve the dilemmas facing feminist/critical scholars. Indeed, core elements of a feminist vision of justice coincide with a restorative vision of justice

Zemlyanska, Vira (2005). Justice and Sentencing Traditions in Central and Eastern Europe Newsletter of the European Forum for Restorative Justice. 6(2-3):6-8

Despite the high and constant development of alternative sanctions, measures and procedures such as community service, conditional caution, probation supervision and Restorative Justice programmes in Western countries, they are slightly spread in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) where they have been introduced only since the Fall of the ‘Iron Curtain’. In some Central and Eastern European countries (for example, Czech Republic, Slovakia) the first mediation and probation initiatives appeared in the middle of 90s, but in others they were undertaken only after 2000. Development of alternative sanctions is closely connected with legal and cultural traditions of the country, where those can be either a supportive factor in its implementation, or a challenge. In this article I will analyse the difference between criminal justice and sentencing traditions in Western and Eastern Europe, and try to explain challenges meeting the current legal reforms running in CEE.