A young person who vandalized community property sits in a circle with affected residents, neighborhood leaders, and a facilitator. They hear directly how their actions impacted people, explain what led to their behavior, and work with the group to determine how they will make things right: restitution, community service, and regular check-ins with a mentor. No criminal record, no court appearances, but genuine accountability through dialogue. Another victim of a similar crime is invited to meet their offender through restorative process and refuses, feeling revictimized by the suggestion they should face the person who harmed them. A restorative circle concludes with an agreement the offender never follows through on, leaving the victim feeling the system prioritized the offender's rehabilitation over their need for justice. Restorative justice promises to transform how we respond to harm by bringing together those affected to repair damage and rebuild relationships. Whether this represents the future of justice or an approach suitable only for certain cases with willing participants remains profoundly contested.
The Case for Restorative Justice as Transformative
Advocates argue that adversarial justice systems fail everyone involved. Victims sit silently while lawyers argue about their case. Offenders go through proceedings without understanding the harm they caused. Communities are excluded from processes about crimes that affected them. Sentences are imposed without repairing damage or preventing recurrence. Restorative justice addresses these failures by centering those most affected. Victims get to speak directly about harm, ask questions offenders can answer, and participate in determining how things will be made right. This produces higher victim satisfaction than traditional prosecution, even when restorative outcomes involve less punishment than courts might impose. Offenders confront the human impact of their actions rather than abstract legal violations, fostering genuine remorse and accountability that punishment alone cannot create. Communities participate in addressing harm and preventing future incidents rather than outsourcing justice to distant institutions. Research consistently shows restorative processes reduce recidivism more effectively than traditional sentencing. From this view, restorative justice works across offense types when properly facilitated, from youth shoplifting to serious violence. It represents not just an alternative but a fundamentally better approach that repairs harm, holds people accountable through dialogue rather than punishment, and strengthens rather than fractures communities.
The Case for Limited Application and Traditional Justice
Others argue that restorative justice works for motivated participants with certain types of offenses but cannot replace traditional prosecution for serious crimes or unwilling parties. Some offenses are so severe that community dialogue feels inadequate. A victim of serious violence may experience being asked to sit with their attacker as revictimization, feeling pressure to forgive or participate in their offender's rehabilitation when what they need is separation and consequences. Offenders can manipulate restorative processes, appearing remorseful to avoid harsher outcomes while lacking genuine accountability. From this perspective, restorative justice may supplement traditional sentencing for cases where victims want it and offenders demonstrate genuine willingness to engage, but it cannot be the primary response. Public safety requires that dangerous offenders be incapacitated regardless of whether victims want restorative processes. Society has interests in responding to crime beyond what individual victims desire. Moreover, power imbalances in restorative settings can lead to unfair outcomes when skilled facilitators are not present or when cultural dynamics are misunderstood. Domestic violence, sexual assault, and offenses involving vulnerable victims particularly risk retraumatization through face-to-face encounters. Traditional prosecution exists precisely because justice cannot depend entirely on voluntary participation and interpersonal dialogue.
The Victim Choice Tension
Restorative justice emphasizes victim participation, yet not all victims want to engage with offenders. Some find healing through the process. Others find even the invitation to participate burdensome or upsetting. Whether restorative justice should be offered to all victims as an option, or whether certain cases should not involve restorative processes regardless of victim preferences, creates tension. From one view, victims deserve choice about how justice proceeds, including choosing restorative approaches when they find them healing. From another, expecting victims to meet with offenders places inappropriate burden on them, and the system should not make that option available when it risks harm. Meanwhile, when offenders want restorative justice because they believe it will result in lesser consequences, but victims refuse to participate, whose interests determine whether the case proceeds restoratively, traditionally, or not at all?
The Cultural and Indigenous Dimension
Many Indigenous justice traditions center restoration, healing, and community accountability rather than adversarial prosecution and punitive sentencing. Sentencing circles, healing lodges, and elder involvement in justice processes reflect approaches practiced long before Canadian legal systems existed. From one perspective, restorative justice represents an opportunity to decolonize justice by incorporating Indigenous practices and recognizing that Western adversarial models are not universal truths. Indigenous communities should control justice processes for their members, using traditional approaches that emphasize maintaining relationships and community wholeness. From another perspective, romanticizing Indigenous justice practices ignores that some Indigenous communities want access to the full range of justice options, including traditional prosecution when serious harm occurs. Moreover, implementing restorative approaches without genuine Indigenous control and cultural grounding risks appropriating Indigenous practices while stripping them of their cultural context and meaning.
The Question
If restorative justice produces higher victim satisfaction and lower reoffending than traditional prosecution, why does it remain the exception rather than the norm in most jurisdictions? Can processes designed around voluntary participation and power balance work for offenses involving significant violence or vulnerability, or are some crimes fundamentally unsuitable for restorative approaches? And when cultural traditions emphasize restoration while contemporary legal systems emphasize punishment, whose conception of justice should prevail, and who decides which approach applies to specific cases and communities?