| Restorative justice is a new perspective with a growing currency in Western industrialized societies. As a problem-solving approach to harmful behaviour that eschews violent and coercive methods, restorative justice theory displaces the phenomenon of punishment which is central to retributive justice. Restorative justice theory and practice, however, have tended to overlook or de-emphasize the analyses of punishments which are primarily concerned with "the psychology of punitive justice" (Mead) or the sociological function of punishment to "maintain social cohesion intact" (Durkheim). This paper considers the problem of punishment as an expression of collective, moral/legal censure motivated by the psychological sentiments of revents and the sociopolitical foundations of retribution. A challenge for restorative justice lies in the question of how to respond to these issues in the absence of punishment. |
Updated 05/20/2006