ABSTRACT
The past 50 years have witnessed growing international concern for human rights, reflected in the development of human rights law and in a range of international standards and norms guiding criminal justice policymakers and practitioners. These standards and norms reflect various criminal justice theories that have risen and fallen over the past half-century. Restorative justice theory offers a conceptual framework that may reconcile apparently inconsistent criminal justice norms and standards. The apparent inconsistencies may simply reflect a paradigm shift from a legalistic understanding of crime to a model that recognizes the injuries to victims and communities as well A review of the documents included in the Compendium of United Nations Standards and Norms in Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice finds significant support for restorative justice theory. The documents indicate that: (1) states must balance the interests of victims, offenders, and the public; (2) victims and offenders must have access to formal and informal dispute resolution mechanisms; (3) crime prevention requires comprehensive action by government and the community; (4) government’s role in responding to particular crimes should be to provide impartial, formal judicial mechanisms for victims and offenders; and (5) the community’s role must be to help victims and offenders reintegrate.
The past 50 years have witnessed the development of international human rights law. The fundamental human rights of individuals has been a topic of discussion since the time of the Greeks and Romans (Forsythe, 1991) and several international conventions and treaties relating to slavery, trade unions, the protection of non-combatants during war, and the rights of minorities were negotiated in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (Rodley, 1987). Prior to World War II, however, 122the subject of human rights was deemed a matter of national, not international, concern. The events preceding that war and the atrocities that took place during it acted as the catalyst for the internationalization of human rights. The Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations (U.N.), adopted in 1945, expressed a commitment “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” This was followed a few years later by the U.N. General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then by a succession of documents on human rights, notably the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Optional Protocols.
Portions of each of these documents address the criminal justice system directly. In addition, U.N. bodies have developed a range of standards and norms related specifically to crime prevention and criminal justice. The Compendium of United Nations Standards and Norms in Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (U.N., 1992) catalogues 39 separate conventions, model treaties, declarations, guiding principles, basic principles, codes of conduct, and standard minimum rules covering the topics of international cooperation; treatment of offenders; the judiciary and law enforcement; juvenile justice; protection of victims; capital punishment, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments; and suppression of prostitution. In addition, it includes nine human rights declarations, conventions and principles that address various aspects of criminal justice practice.
