NCJ Number
217634
Journal
Criminal Justice Review Volume: 32 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2007 Pages: 5-25
Date Published
March 2007
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article explores the effect of blending the theoretical foundations of restorative justice and community justice as a product of neighborhood life.
Abstract
"Restorative justice" views crime as harm to individuals, their neighborhoods, the surrounding community, and the offender. It aims to promote healing for crime's harm through structured communication processes among victims, offenders, community representatives, and government officials. "Community justice" tends to be highly structured and controlled by criminal justice agencies and may result in punitive sanctions against offenders; however, its primary goals are to strengthen neighborhoods, promote social justice, and improve the quality of life for residents in their neighborhoods. Mostly, these goals are accomplished by organizing citizen participation in crime reduction through increased surveillance and the strengthening of residents' informal social controls. In order to review existing patterns in restorative and/or community justice programs, this article describes 10 programs that were selected because they have some degree of involvement of victims, offenders, communities, and governments. Each of the 10 programs is managed by a governmental entity. The programs are presented under the categories of police-administered programs, court-administered programs, and corrections-administered programs. The most significant feature of each of the programs is a reframing of the government's role so that it acts as the facilitator and supporter of the restorative justice process through the involvement of neighborhood residents. Each neighborhood identifies and structures responses to the harms that specific neighborhood crimes are causing. The goal is to produce public safety gains that not only resolve conflict and heal harms between victims and offenders but also contribute to the repair of neighborhoods by mitigating or eliminating crime causes, thus improving neighborhood safety and quality of life. 1 table and 66 references