Essay On Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is a wonderful thing and has been around for years, but it is just a new thing coming to the U.S. Restorative Justice has been used in countries in Europe and in South America. Restorative justice takes a different approach than the traditional justice system not only does it provide more help to the victims with closure it also helps the offenders right the wrong they have done and become a respectable law-abiding citizen. So many questions were being asked and not answered by the traditional justice system. Some of the questions that victims were asking were and scholars a like were: “Why are some so dissatisfied with how the criminal justice system treats them? Is it wrong when victims want to have a say in how the
South Africa has used the Restorative Justice system in their Juvenile system and has seen success with their juveniles not repeat offending or committing crimes. “The South African Cabinet has recently given approval for the introduction into Parliament of a Bill that will provide a new system to deal with child offenders.” (Skelton, 2002) Not only did the officers and the courts agree that restorative justice was a great idea, but their parliament agreed as well, and it became part of their law. A lot of scholars have argued that this is not an effective way of punishing since at the time of this article the South African government was only a seven-year-old democracy. They argued that you should be an established country before trying to change the justice system. Some scholars also said that it is a good thing to have restorative justice in the South African government because the African culture believes “that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.” (Skelton, 2002) But this way of thinking has also had an opposite reaction from the restorative justice perspective because the whole idea of restorative justice is to get everyone involved, the community, the victim, and the
A report by the Restorative Justice Centre (a non-governmental organization based in Pretoria) records the findings of a field study off our incidents during the year 2000 in which children suspected of crimes were assaulted, degraded and in one instance, killed by community members taking the law into their own hands” (Skelton, 2002). So, if the Restorative Justice system is not used in the right way it can be abused and have a very bad outcome on the way people see restorative justice and the way people want justice. As you have read about the South African government using Restorative Justice to help Juveniles you see that it can be abused by people who misinterpret the way it is supposed to be used. “It is important to remember that this is a theory of justice that has grown out of experience. It has been informed by indigenous and customary responses to crime, both those of the past and those used today.” (Morris & Maxwell, 2001) As it is spelled out in this quote Restorative Justice is a thing that has grown out of experience and I believe that since they were a new democracy they did not have a good platform or base to make the restorative justice process work to its