ABSTRACT
As has been demonstrated in Chapter Two, restorative justice advocates have a number of rather ambitious aspirations. It is believed that restorative justice could present a new moral ‘lens’ through which crime and justice could be looked at (Zehr 1990). It is argued that it offers a ‘fully fledged alternative’ to both punishment and offender rehabilitation (Walgrave 1995, 1999, 2000a; Bazemore 1996). It is promised that restorative justice will place victims at its centre and treat their needs as the primary concern (Claassen 1995; Achilles and Zehr 2001; Mika and Zehr 2003). Proponents aspire to develop a model of criminal justice which empowers stakeholders in crime, ‘restores the deliberative control of justice by citizens’ (Braithwaite 2003a, 87) and offers a deprofessionalized, community-based alternative to the state justice system. Some argue that restorative justice offers a way of doing criminal justice which is characterized by voluntariness (Marshall 1996; Council of Europe 1999; McCold 2000; UN 2000). How realistic are these ideals? What happens when they are pursued in practice?
