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Summary

Pollard, Charles. (2000). "If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will look like nails." In Restorative justice and civil society, eds. Heather Strang and John Braithwaite, 165-179. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Pollard maintains that a fundamental limitation in policing has been that the police only had the traditional criminal law and criminal justice processes to deal with a wide range of problems in communities, many of which would be better addressed through other approaches. Restorative justice, raising fundamental questions about the traditional criminal justice system, presents the possibility of a shift in police culture to a more problem-oriented, community style of policing. With this in mind, Pollard looks at policing and problem-solving in a civil society, the evolution of restorative justice in the Thames Valley Police, community safety and the limitations of the formal criminal justice system, limitations in the formal trial system, community safety and restorative justice, and prospects for advancing restorative justice in the national and international spheres.

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