What future for ‘public safety’ and ‘restorative justice’ in a system of community penalties?

‘Public safety’ and ‘restorative justice’ are big, protean ideas. They have political value as well as substantive merit, which increasingly leads managers of community corrections agencies – and individual probation and parole agents – to try to operationalize and harmonize the ideas in their practice. History suggests that their operational capacity will fall short of what that ambition requires, but that their effort will move the field to a new, perhaps better, but still transitional condition.