A comment in the Arizona Daily Star caught my eye. It read, “The re-election of Conover is good for restorative justice”. I often get a little squeamish when a well understood concept such as “justice” becomes modified or narrowed by affixing an adjective. How does “restorative justice” differ from the plain old justice we all know and love?
Pima County does have a restorative justice program - perhaps the author of the comment specifically had that in mind. Here is Pima County’s definition of restorative justice from the website:
Restorative Justice (RJ) is a set of principles that gives rise to practices that adhere to the idea that crime hurts victims, communities, and offenders. It centers the needs of people directly harmed and addresses root causes of harmful behavior. Restoration refers to repairing the harm done and rebuilding relationships in the community affected by crime.
This does not sound fundamentally different from the plain old garden variety retributive justice with which we are all familiar.
The catch phrase used by the Pima County Attorney’s office is, “A victim-centric, offender-focused, community-led response to crime”, which sounds like conventional retributive justice to me - arrest and detention (offender focus), investigation (victim-centric), trial and sentencing (community-led response to crime).
Not all crimes may be dealt with by a restorative process. The process itself involves a meeting, or more indirect method of communication, between the victim and the perp (perpetrator). The victim and perp may ask questions of each other. The perp will have an opportunity to express regret, and often a plan for restitution is put in place. The victim will have a chance to ask a number of questions, most of which will probably start with the word “why”. If all goes according to plan, the case is dropped.
Clearly, those crimes resulting in sever trauma, violence resulting in physical injury for example, would not be appropriate for the program. The program also requires the co-operation of both the victim and the perp.
It is always good to have a variety of tools with which to mete out justice. The restoration shortcut will save money, repair the damage, and provide enough resolution to allow both the victim and perp to move on. However, we should not make the mistake of thinking that this approach is destined to replace our retributive system. The punishment associated with retributive justice is a huge deterrent to the commission of crime, for example, and often restitution is not possible (consider murder or rape). In the end, restorative justice is a niche procedure appropriate for a narrow slice of the criminal justice pie.