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Retribution Compared To Restorative Justice

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Provide the following:
- A definition of restorative justice
- A definition of retributive justice
- The argument for restorative justice
- The argument against restorative justice
- The argument for retributive justice
- The argument against retributive justice

Please include references, case law and scholarly articles (no internet articles please).

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This is a comparison outlining the concepts of retribution and restorative justice.

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Let's begin with the definition of restorative justice. Now, over the past decades, there has been growing interest in new approaches to justice, which involve the community and focus on the victim. The current system, in which crime is considered an act against the State, works on a premise that largely ignores the victim and the community that is hurt most by crime. Instead, it focuses on punishing offenders without forcing them to face the impact of their crimes.

So, what this means is that restorative justice is parallel to offering a more all inclusive processes to really reorient the goals of justice. Restorative justice has been finding a receptive audience as it creates common ground which accommodates the goals of many constituencies and provides a collective focus. The guiding principles of restorative justice are as follows:

Crime is an offence against human relationships.
Victims and the community are central to justice processes.
The first priority of justice processes is to assist victims.
The second priority is to restore the community, to the degree possible.
The offender has personal responsibility to victims and to the community for crimes committed.

Now, as we refer to restorative practices, the field of restorative practices has significant implications for all aspects of society from families, classrooms, schools and prisons to workplaces, associations, governments, even whole nations because restorative practices can develop better relationships among these organizations' constituents and help the overall organization function more effectively. For example, in schools, the use of restorative practices has been shown to reliably reduce misbehaviour, bullying, violence and crime among students and improve the overall climate for learning. Everyone who finds themselves in positions of authority, meaning, from parents, teachers and police to administrators and government officials, which can benefit from learning about restorative practices.

Remember, the true objective of restorative practices is that people are more content or more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes when those in authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.

Restorative practices, which evolved from restorative justice, is a new field of study that has the potential to positively influence human behaviour and strengthen civil society around the world.

The fundamental premise of restorative practices is that people are happier, more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes when those in authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.

The IIRP distinguishes between the terms restorative practices and restorative justice. We view restorative justice practices as a subset of restorative practices. Restorative justice practices are reactive, consisting of formal or informal responses to crime and other wrongdoing after it occurs. The IIRP's definition of restorative practices also includes the use of informal and formal processes that precede wrongdoing, those that proactively build relationships and a sense of community to prevent conflict and wrongdoing.

The field of restorative practices has significant implications for all aspects of society — from families, classrooms, schools and prisons to workplaces, associations, governments, even whole nations — because restorative practices can develop better relationships among these organizations' constituents and help the overall organization function more effectively. For example, in schools, the use of restorative practices has been shown to reliably reduce misbehaviour, bullying, violence and crime among students and improve the overall climate for learning. Everyone who finds themselves in positions of authority — from parents, teachers and police to administrators and government officials — can benefit from learning about restorative practices.

The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) is a world leader in restorative practices, providing professional development and accredited master's degree and certificate programs. At the IIRP's model programs for at-risk and delinquent youth, the use of restorative practices has been shown to significantly reduce offending rates and improve youth attitudes. To learn more about successful programs emerging throughout the world, from single schools to whole community implementation models, visit the Restorative Works learning network.

Restorative practices is a social science that studies how to build social capital and achieve social discipline through participatory learning and decision-making.

The use of restorative practices helps to:

Reduce crime, violence and bullying;
Improve human behaviour;
Strengthen civil society;
Provide effective leadership;
Restore relationships;
and Repair harm

Where social capital — a network of relationships — is already well established, it is easier to respond effectively to wrongdoing and restore social order — as well as to create a healthy and positive organizational environment. Social capital is defined as the connections among individuals (Putnam, 2001), and the trust, mutual understanding, shared values and behaviours that bind us together and make cooperative action possible (Cohen & Prusak, 2001).

In public health terms, restorative justice practices provide tertiary prevention, introduced after the problem has occurred, with the intention of avoiding re-occurrence. Restorative practices expands that effort with primary prevention, introduced before the problem has occurred.

The social science of restorative practices offers a common thread to tie together theory, research and practice in diverse fields such as education, counselling, criminal justice, social work and organizational management. Individuals and organizations in many fields are developing models and methodology and performing empirical research that share the same implicit premise, but are often unaware of the commonality of each other's efforts.

For example, in criminal justice, restorative circles and restorative conferences allow victims, offenders and their respective family members and friends to come together to explore how everyone has been affected by an offense and, when possible, to decide how to repair the harm and meet their own needs (McCold, 2003). In social work, family group decision-making (FGDM) or family group conferencing (FGC) processes empower extended families to meet privately, without professionals in the room, to make a plan to protect children in their own families from further violence and neglect or to avoid residential placement outside their own homes (American Humane Association, 2003). In education, circles and groups provide opportunities for students to share their feelings, build relationships and solve problems, and when there is wrongdoing, to play an active role in addressing the wrong and making things right (Riestenberg, 2002).

These various fields employ different terms, all of which fall under the rubric of restorative practices: In the criminal justice field the phrase used is "restorative justice" (Zehr, 1990); in social work the term employed is "empowerment" (Simon, 1994); in education, talk is of "positive discipline" (Nelsen, 1996) or "the responsive classroom" (Charney, 1992); and in organizational leadership "horizontal management" (Denton, 1998) is referenced. The social science of restorative practices recognizes all of these perspectives and incorporates them into its scope.

Restorative practices has its roots in restorative justice, a way of looking at criminal justice that emphasizes repairing the harm done to people and relationships rather than only punishing offenders (Zehr, 1990).

Moreover, restorative justice originated in the 1970s as mediation or reconciliation between victims and offenders. In 1974 Mark Yantzi, a probation officer, arranged for two teenagers to meet directly with their victims following a vandalism spree and agree to restitution. The positive response by the victims led to the first victim-offender reconciliation program, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, with the support of the Mennonite Central Committee and collaboration with the local probation department (McCold, 1999; Peachey, 1989). The concept subsequently acquired various names, such as victim-offender mediation and victim-offender dialogue as it spread through North America and to Europe through the 1980s and 1990s (Office of Victims of Crime, 1998).

Restorative justice echoes indigenous practices employed in cultures all over the world, from Native American and First Nation Canadian to African, Asian, Celtic, Hebrew, Arab and many others (Eagle, 2001; Goldstein, 2006; Haarala, 2004; Mbambo & Skelton, 2003; Mirsky, 2004; Roujanavong, 2005; Wong, 2005).

Eventually modern restorative justice broadened to include communities of care as well, with victims' and offenders' families and friends participating in collaborative processes called conferences and circles. Conferencing addresses power imbalances between the victim and offender by including additional supporters (McCold, 1999).

The family group conference (FGC) started in New Zealand in 1989 as a response to native Maori people's concerns with the number of their children being removed from their homes by the courts. It was originally envisioned as a family empowerment process, not as restorative justice (Doolan, 2003). In North America it was renamed family group decision making (FGDM) (Burford & Pennell, 2000).

In 1991 the FGC was adapted by an Australian police officer, Terry O'Connell, as a community policing strategy to divert young people from court. The The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) or IIRP now calls that adaptation, which has spread around the world, a restorative conference. It has been called other names, such as a community accountability conference (Braithwaite, 1994) and victim-offender conference (Stutzman Amstutz & Zehr, 1998). In 1994 Marg Thorsborne, an Australian educator, was the first to use a restorative conference in a school (O'Connell, 1998).

The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) grew out of the Community Service Foundation and Buxmont Academy, which since 1977 have provided programs for delinquent and at-risk youth in southeastern Pennsylvania, USA. Initially founded in 1994 under the auspices of Buxmont Academy, the Real Justice program, now an IIRP program, has trained professionals around the world in restorative conferencing. In 1999 the newly created IIRP broadened its training to informal and proactive restorative practices, in addition to formal restorative conferencing (Wachtel, 1999). Since then the IIRP, an accredited graduate school, has developed a comprehensive framework for practice and theory that expands the restorative paradigm far beyond its origins in criminal justice (McCold & Wachtel, 2001, 2003). Use of restorative practices is now spreading worldwide, in education, criminal justice, social work, counselling, youth services, workplace and faith community applications (Wachtel, 2013).

Why Would We Consider This Restorative Theory?

There is one answer and we will term that the social discipline window. To begin, the social discipline window also defines restorative practices as a leadership model for parents in families, teachers in classrooms, administrators and managers in organizations, police and social workers in communities and judges and officials in government. The fundamental unifying hypothesis of ...

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