Provocations of Restorative Justice

Author: Cohen R.L.

Source: Social Justice Research, Volume 14, Number 2, June 2001 , pp. 209-232(24)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

Depending on whom you ask, restorative justice is a concept, a theory, or a social movement. It is also, variously, “new wine in old bottles,” “atavistic” and “fundamentally misguided,” (e.g., Delgado (2000). Standard Law Rev. 52: 751–775; Levrant et al. (1999). Crime Delinq. 45(1): 3–27) or revolutionary, immensely promising, and transformative (e.g., Bazemore & Schiff, 2001). I intend to suggest here how recent work on restorative justice might serve as a stimulating provocation to continuing work on procedural and distributive justice. I try to do that in three steps: first, by offering a short description of theory and research on restorative justice; second, by discussing a particular social policy and associated practice—the Vermont Reparative Probation Boards—that has grown out of that work; and third, by discussing work on three issue clusters that might provoke a rethinking of some fundamental issues.

Keywords: justice; restorative justice; reparative probation; reintegrative shame; reconciliation

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont 05201; rlcohen@bennington.edu

Publication date: 2001-06-01