The Restorative Justice Alternative to Punishment

Abstract This chapter discusses restorative justice as a complement to, but mostly as an alternative to, criminal punishment. Section 11.1 discusses the meaning of restorative justice as a way of seeking to repair relations between offenders and those they wrongfully harm. Section 11.2 considers six practical problems: that it cannot stand on its own because not all responsible parties are ready to accept responsibility; that it suffers from due process problems dealing with those who contest their guilt; that its lenient sentences may undermine deterrence; that impacted parties may not want to participate or may be unreasonable; that it runs into proportionality problems when there is no clear victim; and that the idiosyncratic way cases are handled can result in equity concerns. Section 11.2 also considers one theoretical reason to think that it cannot fully replace the criminal law: it is a fundamentally anarchic approach to justice, in contrast with the criminal law, which is fundamentally political. The chapter concludes that restorative justice can be a useful complement to criminal punishment, but it cannot reasonably be taken to be a full substitute for the criminal law.