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Restorative Justice for Victims and Offenders: A Return to American Traditions

NCJ Number
185124
Journal
Corrections Today Volume: 62 Issue: 4 Dated: July 2000 Pages: 132-135
Author(s)
Emilio C. Viano
Date Published
July 2000
Length
4 pages
Annotation
After briefly tracing the history of informal social control and the evolution of formal social control in America, this article describes the rise of the victims' rights movement and the emergence of the philosophy and practice of restorative justice as a return to traditional community-based resolutions of offender-victim conflicts.
Abstract
During the last 20 years, a novel approach to justice has been introduced to the criminal justice enterprise, mostly in Australia, New Zealand, North America, and some European countries. Its umbrella name is "restorative justice." Restorative justice focuses on the restoration of the victim and the guiding of the offender into a law-abiding life. The primary objectives of restorative justice are to attend to the needs of the victim, survivors, and others impacted by the crime; to consider victims, communities, and offenders as "customers" that are active participants in the system, rather than passive recipients of services or of interventions that may be unwanted, inappropriate, or ineffective; to integrate offenders into the community; to encourage and enable offenders to assume active responsibility for the harm they inflicted; to create community support for victim and offender services as well as crime prevention; and to provide an alternative to the escalating costs and delays typically associated with the justice system. 1 reference