Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

Restorative Justice (RJ)

Restorative justice (RJ) is an approach to criminal

behavior that emphasizes healing victims, offenders,

and communities. This variant of ADR is being

increasingly adopted by justice systems worldwide.

The basic premise of RJ is that crime is a violation of

individuals and communities, not merely a violation of

law. RJ prioritizes the goal of reparation of harm rather

than the traditional punitive goal of just deserts. RJ is

fundamentally different from other ADR and tradi-

tional courtroom procedures in its emphasis on the

psychological importance of group belonging and its

core goal of reintegrating offenders into important

social groups. The group value model offers clues as to

why people support restorative sanctions: Restorative

sentencing emphasizes that an offender has lost his or

her status as a respected member of the group and

should perform reparative acts to regain that status.

RJ consists of a variety of practices at various

stages of the criminal legal process, including court

diversion, actions taken in conjunction with police

and court decisions, reparation boards, and meetings

between victims and offenders. RJ procedures are

more prevalent in juvenile than in adult justice sys-

tems but are becoming more common in dealing with

adult offenders. In the United States, RJ programs

tend to be privately run or community based, with a

number of RJ programs also developed by individual

probation departments. Other nations, however, tend

to implement RJ programs more systematically, incor-

porating RJ procedures as one component in a hierar-

chy of legislated responses to juvenile crime.

One common RJ practice is conferencing, in which

the offender, the victim, and their supporters come

together to discuss an offense. At the end of a confer-

ence, all participants, including the victim and

offender, decide on a course of action for the offender

to complete. The agreement is an undertaking by the

offender to make reparation for the harm caused by

the crime and might include, for example, community

service or monetary compensation.

Consistent with research showing that ADR proce-

dures engender greater disputant satisfaction, RJ con-

ference participants report fairer treatment than their

counterparts who experience court procedures. The

RISE project in Australia, one of the few experimen-

tal studies of conferencing, randomly assigned cases

to either RJ conference or court. Across all offense

types included in the study (youth violence, drunk dri-

ving, shoplifting, and property crime with personal

victims), participants’ fairness judgments were higher

in the conference condition. Studies on RJ conferenc-

ing have also found that recidivism is lower following

conferencing than after court procedures.

Although early evaluations of RJ are promising,

both the predominance of nonexperimental studies

(with potential selection biases in participants, pro-

grams, and types and severity of offenses studied) and

the need for systematic examinations of the psycho-

logical processes underlying participants’ responses

to RJ preclude authoritative conclusions about its

effectiveness.

Larry Heuer and Diane Sivasubramaniam

See alsoAlternative Dispute Resolution; Plea Bargaining;

Public Opinion About the Courts; Therapeutic

Jurisprudence; Victim-Offender Mediation With

Juvenile Offenders; Victim Participation in the

Criminal Justice System

Further Readings

Darley, J. M., & Pittman, T. S. (2003). The psychology of

compensatory and retributive justice. Personality and

Social Psychology Review, 7(4), 324–336.

Latimer, J., Dowden, C., & Muise, D. (2005). The effectiveness

of restorative practices: A meta-analysis. The Prison

Journal, 85(2), 127–144.

MacCoun, R. J., Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1992). Alternative

dispute resolution in trial and appellate courts. In D. K.

Kagehiro & W. S. Laufer (Eds.),Handbook of psychology

and law(pp. 95–118). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Morris, M. W., & Leung, K. (2000). Justice for all? Progress

in research on cultural variation in the psychology of

distributive and procedural justice. Applied Psychology,

49 (1), 100–132.

Thibaut, J., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural justice: A

psychological analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why people obey the law. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.

PROFILING

Profiling is a relatively new investigative technique

that, in the past 30 years, has developed from what

used to be described as an art to a rigorous science

based on advanced empirical research. Results from

the first wave of research have shown that there is

Profiling——— 629

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