ABSTRACT
Over the last decade, there has been extensive political and legal deployment of restorative justice as a concept intended to reform and even transform Canadian criminal justice. Restorative justice has been advocated by Canadian law reform commissions, by parliamentary committees and by the courts as an effective way to reform criminal justice. Canada has probably gone further than any other country in developing a ‘restorative jurisprudence’ (Braithwaite 2003: 16) reflected in its laws and legal cases. Although Canada was a pioneer in developing one of the first restorative justice programmes and many individual projects continue, it remains a country where there has been more top-down political and legal mobilization and institutionalization of restorative justice than measurable bottom-up actualization of restorative justice.
