Lecturers at the Open University (distance learning) have collected a representative range of writings on restorative justice.  Nearly all have been previously published in books and periodicals, mostly American, a few British and Australasian.  The editors provide a useful overview in their introduction, setting out the book’s three parts:  conceptualizing, institutionalizing and contesting restorative justice (RJ).   

Many of the leading authors are included.  The section on concept begins with a reprint of Nils Christie’s celebrated article, and Kay Harris’s view of ‘feminine’ values which would see punishment and the ‘war on crime’ as a civil war and remove the idea of power from its central position.  Zehr and Mika state RJ principles such as voluntariness and community involvement.  Two articles by John Braithwaite are usefully retrieved from American law journals.  He says that ‘All western criminal justice systems are brutal, institutionally vengeful, and dishonest in their stated intentions’ (p. 55), which the recent book by the British former chief inspector of prisons supports (Ramsbotham 2003).  He says that RJ ‘restores the deliberative control of justice by citizens’ (p. 57, his italics), subject to state control to prevent excesses.  It is not without risks, but can be ‘an important strategy for advancing social justice’ (p. 160).  Methods such as family group conferences, restorative cautioning and sentencing circles are described. Allison Morris and Loraine Gelsthorpe provide evidence, in the controversial matter of domestic violence cases, that RJ can overcome many of the objections to conventional criminal justice.  Michael Levi critically considers the use of shaming and incapacitating with business fraudsters – a useful chapter because RJ literature seldom touches on this.   

The third section is critical, but constructively so.  Andrew Ashworth, as a criminologically aware academic lawyer, accepts some but not all of RJ’s tenets and Chris Cunneen focuses on its implications for aboriginal populations.  Kathy Daly gives examples of ‘myths’ that seem to claim too much for RJ.  Braithwaite argues that conferencing can foster a culture of apology instead of denial, and that RJ can be part of a strategy for advancing social justice.  Finally Adam Crawford and Todd Clear distinguish RJ , based on reacting to ‘cases’, from community justice, based on ‘places’, with potential for revitalizing communities. 

All in all, this is not a blueprint for RJ, and indeed that would be inappropriate since part of the idea is that it should grow as local circumstances require, but subject to safeguards (it was published too soon to refer to Declan Roche’s (2003) important work on this).  It has little about the research by the English Home Office, but that may be just as well since the research was carried out before restorative ideals were fully implemented (they still aren’t).  But it provides a rounded introduction to the subject, which left this reader optimistic but not starry-eyed. 

There are one or two proof-reading errors (‘writing wrongs’, p. 3, and Morris for Harris, p. 6); but a useful index. 

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References

Ramsbotham, David (2003)  Prisongate:  the shocking state of Britain’s prisons and the need for visionary change. London:  Free Press. 

Roche, Declan (2003)  Accountability in restorative justice.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

September 2004