Beyond Restorative Justice-Zwelethemba, a Future-Focused Model of Local Capacity Conflict Resolution

Abstract

During the 1990s many countries around the world introduced statutory measures more supportive of restorative justice and restorative programmes received greater recognition by the formal justice system. Internationally, the restorative movement was widely acknowledged. With recognition it moved in many countries from the margins to the mainstream of criminal justice. As this process occurred many scholars became concerned with the need to specify core restorative values. An important mo- tivation for this was the fear of a corruption of restorative justice by the logic of pun- ishment (Crawford and Newburn, 2003). John Braithwaite (2002) was one of many scholars who now placed greater emphasis on the need to explicate the value base of restorative justice. He argued that the long list of values which restorative justice pro- moted were united by their emphasis on greater community self-determination, inclu- sion rather than exclusion, a focus on a better future rather than on guilt and retribu- tion and an experience that justice has been done. His analysis was helpful in distin- guishing between core and less significant values and desired outcomes. He placed ‘re- spectful dialogue’ (2002, 14-15) – a value that resonates with what he conceives as the key republican value of ‘non-domination’ – at the core of restorative justice, and val- ues such as forgiveness, mercy and remorse as values that, while not appropriate for direct pursuit, might be indirectly realised. He argued further that in thinking about how to realise values and objectives one should distinguish between values them- selves and the processes for realising them.

This distinction opens up conceptual space that enables one to explore how re- storative values may be realised differently in distinguishing between how these values are actualised in different places, both within criminal or restorative justice, and po- tentially within or across other fields, or nodes. Uncoupling values from processes al- lows one to scrutinise both the extent to which restorative (or punitive) values are re- alised within various ‘restorative’ programmes, and the extent to which other practic- es, which have not hitherto been regarded as ‘restorative’, might give expression to these values.