ABSTRACT
Restorative justice is perceptually much fairer than conventional justice for all kinds of participants in justice processes and this contributes to effectiveness. Effect-sizes for restorative justice do improve more strongly than for other interventions when more hours of preparation and more restorative components are invested in them. A fair criticism is that restorative justice advocates present a moving target to critics. Empirical or theoretical defects are defended by claiming critics use too narrowed a conception of restorative justice. Long lists of restorative values offend devotees of parsimony. Yet the social movement for restorative justice creates an omelet open to improvement by new ingredients. EcoPeace is an Israeli-Jordanian NGO with a brilliantly restorative strategy for transforming water from a conflict driver to a confidence-builder for peace. Practitioners should use reintegrative shaming theory less in restorative justice facilitator training. The quality of the scholarly debate on reintegrative shaming theory has generally been nuanced, but inward-looking in some quarters.
