Restorative Justice and School Literature Review

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Restorative justice is something that has become more and more prominent within the criminal justice sphere. The use of the concept and practice has emerged in its own right within the juvenile justice realm. The efficacy of restorative justice when it comes to juvenile offenders is a very important topic because being able to top the patterns of crime, addition and deviance in general is something that should absolutely be stopped and regulated early on in an offender's life due to how hard it becomes to do the same as an offender enters and reenters the justice system over the course of their life. It is important to create and retain a connection between these young offenders and the victims that suffer at their hands so that the connection is not lost and the offender becomes ambivalent or even hostile about the feelings, suffering and toil that their crimes take on said victims. It is only through the use of empirically proven evidence and history that the offenders can remain with and make peace with their community rather than having their lives lost to institutionalization and a life a crime. The purpose of this brief fairly brief literature review is to get a sense as to whether restorative justice shows promise based on the data and merits knows up to this point. With that said, findings up to this point have indicated some positive results but this is not completely uniform and consistent across the board given the sample that was used for this report. With that being said, this report has assembled ten different empirical studies and reviews of restorative justice, its efficacy and important aspects of the same.

Restorative Justice for Juveniles

The primary question to ask about the concept behind restorative justice, whether it be with juveniles or offenders in general, is just how far one takes the concept before resorting to more severe and punitive punishments based on real-world results, patterns and statistics. Rather than use simple forms of persuasion, this report shall focus on the empirical and historical evidence that exists on the subject. There some that argue that some people just need a second chance and a little faith while others say that a direct path to punishment is the only sure way. A related but different example would be the use of house arrest, probation or other non-prison punishments rather that incarceration due to the proverbial in the sand that is created and manifested when a person is foisted into the system. Either way, there would seem to be marked shift away from conventional prison and similar tactics and towards alternative means to both lower crime rates, recidivism rates and incarceration rates. Of course, whether any or all of these approaches work can only be proven and shown through attempting them and them comparing them to the empirical results that come from the more traditional and widely used efforts. While restorative justice has promise in the eyes of many, it will take ongoing and seeable results to sell it to many criminal justice experts and scholars as a worthwhile alternative to what is done conventionally.

Restorative Justice

Something that was alluded to in the introduction is one of the more common and pervasive themes when it comes to restorative justice, and that would be using the tactic as a means to avoid or break away from the pattern of just sending juvenile offenders to jail and just allowing them to become part of the system. Even if some feel that such a method is a viable method, there is the open question as to whether there are better ways. One city in the United States that is a flashpoint in this regard is Chicago, given the rampant amount of gang and gun crime that pervades the city and greater area. Indeed, restorative justice is seen by many as a superior alternative to incarceration, although that opinion is not unanimous. In the Chicago iteration, there is a focus on victim/offender mediation and peacemaking, overall violence reduction programs and how to handle younger offenders that are guilty of murder. The topics and tactics in question are compared and contrasted with similar events and patterns in other parts of the world including Canada. The values and community facets in question are obviously mundane to the subject. Overall, there are four primary perceived upsides to the concept and practice of restorative justice. First, restored offenders (regardless of age) are less likely to recidivate.

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Second, restorative programs are more cost-efficient. Third, the system is much more effective because there is the direct interaction and involvement of the victims, which is something that is often absent in other situations and criminal justice patterns. Finally, juveniles are much more likely to be rehabilitated and restored and thus they can still live most of their lives in a more moral and crime-free fashion (Tsui, 2014).

One aspect of restorative justice and how it pertains to the young that many people point to is the increased emergence and the associated need to cater to female offenders. For so much of American history, the more violent and nastier offenders that have been dealt with, regardless of the method, are typically males. However, that is clearly starting to change if more recent crime and offender data, both with juveniles and older offenders, are any indication. According to a United States Department of Justice survey in 2007, the number of younger female offenders was on a sharp rise. As such, any programs and interventions relating to restorative justice, in the eyes of some experts, would have to involve and center on women just as much as they center on men. Even if the overall methodology and patterns of restorative justice are the same with both genders, many people assert that they also have to be a bit different given the differences between people of differing biological genders. Up to this point, at least some of the results have been quite positive. It has been seen that a great number of female offenders are avoiding have to be adjudicated and relegated to the system due to the more modern and new tactics that are being used. Rather than being thrown into and lost to the system, these young female offenders are often getting a new lease on life and they become less likely to have a life of crime and joblessness, not to mention a good amount of time behind bars (Davis, 2010).

A cornerstone of restorative justice, and something that is in fact fairly controversial, is just how the offenders are presented with the results and consequences of their crimes. There are many that would term this as "shaming". In Australia, such "shaming" is commonly referred to as RISE, which is short for re-integrative Shaming Experiments. The method is based on Braithwaite's theory of coupling reintegration with shaming. That is, there is a direct confrontation of the offender and imploring on them that they should in no way feel justified or not guilty for what they did to their victims. When manifested and formed in that way, the results would seem to be a little mixed. It was found that the most direct efforts relating to restorative justice with juveniles was rather hit or miss. However, it was also found that the treatment effects of things such as repaying society, repaying the victim and the overall degree of feeling repentance were sometimes quite positive (Kim & Gerber, 2012).

Speaking of efficacy of restorative justice and gauging the same, one way to see if it works or not comes down to one thing, that being recidivism. Indeed, if a restorative justice program has no apparent positive effect on whether a person engages in crime again after the restorative justice efforts are levied, then it immediately comes into question whether such programs are worth the time and effort. With that in mind, there have been studies that have looked at that precisely and the results, even if sometimes mixed, have largely been positive. Indeed, a study in 2007 by Rodriguez found that those juveniles that participated in restorative justice programs were clearly less likely to recidivate than those that were put through the normal criminal justice pathways for juveniles, whether it be juvenile hall or being charged as adults. That being said, it was clear that the aforementioned biological sex of the offender as well as the nature of the crimes done prior had a lot to do with whether there were future offenses and what those offenses happened to be. In other words, the patterns of recidivism could and would be different for men and women and could also be different based on whether the prior crimes were robbery, theft, vandalism or even rape or murder. Indeed, there are clear patterns that show that female offenders and those with lesser prior….....

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