Abstract

We suggest that a restorative justice critique of current retributive policy and practice may well be a starting point for the development of more just and more effective approaches to sentencing, both formal and informal, and to a more effective approach to reentry for currently incarcerated persons. While restorative justice principles acknowledge the debt owed by offenders to their victims and victimized communities, this is a debt met neither by inflicting harm on the offender nor by removing the offender's rights as a citizen. As a different normative theory, the measure of justice in a restorative approach is the extent to which harm caused by crime is repaired. While restorative justice may therefore demand a lot of offenders, their supporters, and community members, it also provides for the opportunity for victim input and reparation. Most importantly, the normative theory of restorative justice provides a different currency of repair and healing that could begin to displace the currency of punishment that knows no limits. While a restorative metric would certainly have its own limits and guidelines, the metric of uniformity as the primary gauge of justice process could at least be supplemented with a metric of stakeholder participation, satisfaction, accountability, reparation, and peacemaking.