ABSTRACT
Reviews suggest that restorative justice ‘works better with crimes involving personal victims … with violent crimes more consistently than with property crimes … [and] victims benefit, on average, from face-to-face restorative justice conferences’ (Sherman and Strang 2007: 8). Why then is there such caution about using restorative justice for gendered violence? In this chapter I draw on research concerning gendered violence and restorative justice to argue that caution is well advised, and that generic models of restorative justice may be poorly equipped to deal with the needs of victims of gendered violence and entail risks. I also argue that restorative justice demands more from participants than conventional justice, which has implications for victims’ safety and expectations of the victim’s role.
