Restorative justice
approach to justice where victims and perpetrators mediate a restitution agreement
In criminology, restorative justice is a method or ethos of criminal justice and youth justice that seeks to repair harm after crime or violence by empowering the harmed (victims) and harming parties (offenders) to participate in a dialogue. In doing so, restorative justice practitioners work to ensure that offenders take responsibility for their actions, to understand the harm they have caused, to give them an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to discourage them from causing further harm. For victims, the goal is to give them an active role in the process and to reduce feelings of anxiety, unfairness and powerlessness. Restorative justice programmes are complementary to the criminal justice system, including retributive justice. In the matter of defining what "punishment" is, it has been argued that some cases of restorative justice constitute an alternative punishment to those atoning.
Through academic assessment, restorative justice has rendered positive results for both victims and offenders. Proponents argue that most studies suggest it makes offenders less likely to re-offend. A 2007 study also found that it had a higher rate of victim satisfaction and offender accountability than traditional methods of justice delivery. Its use has seen worldwide growth since the 1990s.
The literature summarises restorative justice direct practices as: victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing and circles.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1165392. The Library of Congress control number is sh99004087. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Restorative justice” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.