Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is grounded in the Biblical understanding of justice. The focus is on the harm created, not simply on the breach of law.  This means that the first priority is understanding and responding to the needs of victims and the healing of victims.  The direct victims are the primary focus, but everyone else who has been touched by the crime is also included, including the community as a whole. This is different from retributive justice, which is offender focused and offender driven, determining guilt or innocence and imposing punishment, with the state being the victim.

To address the harm to victims, restorative justice believes that we must affirm moral responsibility and the need for accountability on the part of those who have done the harm.  The retributive justice system sees accountability as punishment or pain for pain, looking only at the past and the crime as a moment in history. Restorative justice sees the past in the context of the future, looking at what accountability is needed to address the harm to the victims, what accountability would provide the offender the opportunity to do restitution or reparation or whatever needs to be done to address the harm created, and what accountability is needed for the restoration of community, including the restoration of the victim and the offender into community.  Such accountability assumes the need for safety.  This involves the whole community taking responsibility for the victims as well as the offender, including seeing everyone in a human context that is broader than just the moment of the crime.

Finally, restorative justice is about the engagement of all parties, including the larger community, in working towards healing the harm and the creation of community, a community that includes both the victims and the offenders in community.

What is Restorative Justice?

Hear what graduates of Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding have to say: