ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what community involvement means and what work it does in restorative justice. Restorative justice is based on a philosophy that goes against professionalisation, standardisation, bureaucratisation, centralisation and formalisation. Restoratives generally promote the potential for restorative justice programmes to restore broken communities or to build strong and peaceful communities. The involvement of the community in restorative justice programmes should work as an important enabler of these informalising and deprofessionalising goals. Instead of having offenders taking punishment given by professionals, restorative justice processes empower offenders to own their offending behaviour and to seek reintegration into their communities by taking every opportunity they can to put right the wrongs they have caused. The rate of victim attendance in restorative justice processes varies a great deal across different schemes, justice systems and offence types, and many are the reasons for victim non-attendance.
