Restorative justice revolves around the ideas that crime is a violation of a person by another person and that the primary concerns should be to make offenders aware of the harm and meet their liability to repair it. The form and amount of reparation from the offender to the victim and the measures to be taken to prevent re-offending should be decided collectively by offenders, victims, and members of their communities. Efforts should be made to improve the relationship between the offender and victim and to reintegrate the offender into the law-abiding community. Chapter 1 describes the aims, scope, and rationale of the book. Chapter 2 outlines the main themes of restorative justice thought and introduces critical debates about the prospects for restorative justice and whether the idea of implementing it on a wide scale is feasible. Chapter 3 discusses the claim that restorative justice was the standard approach to crime throughout most of human history and is found among nearly all aboriginal groups and in all pre-modern societies. Chapters 4 and 5 describe how restorative justice aims to involve and meet the needs of victims and offenders. Chapter 4 also asks whether restorative justice is as victim-oriented as its rhetoric suggests. Chapter 5 addresses the question of whether restorative justice can be properly understood as a nonpunitive response to wrongdoing. Chapter 6 looks at how the idea of reintegrative shaming is shaping restorative justice practices and the ethical issues involved in attempts to shame offenders and promote an attitude of forgiveness. Chapter 7 discusses what is distinctive about restorative justice as a process and examines the rationale for involving victims, offenders, and members of the community directly in the process. Chapter 8 outlines some different directions that the restorative justice movement might take and explores some implications of these different directions for the broader field of penal and social control. Appendices, references, index