Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is defined in the literature as a process by which offenders show remorse and make amends to the victims, family, friends, peer groups, and community stakeholders. In the 1970s, Professor Howard Zehr, the founder of restorative justice, described this approach to cost-efficiently manage property and nonviolent criminal offenders. Zehr wrote about the dilemmas facing society and the responses to criminal acts and wrongdoing that may undermine the community spirit. The traditional methods of crime control are based on ideologies such as retribution and incapacitation (or incarceration), which do not meet the expectations of criminal reform and restoring the victim and the community. Overreliance on incarceration can cause emotional and financial breakdown for the families of the lawbreakers and the victims and strains interpersonal ...