ABSTRACT
Restorative justice (RJ) aims to provide a space for active participation in victim support, hold offenders directly accountable for their actions, restore the emotional health of victims, restore victim's material loss, and provide a range of opportunities for dialogue and problem-solving. This process puts the victim in the center of justice process and focuses on how to help assist them in recovering from the crime. RJ techniques range from sentencing offenders, monitoring offenders in community, and bringing together victims and offenders for dialogue. Evaluations of RJ programs picked up in the 1990s and early 2000s to assess the outcomes of the set of formal efforts in the United States and abroad. A recent study on the effectiveness of reintegrative shaming experiments (RISE) in Canberra, Australia from 1995-2000 highlighted the positive outcomes of an RJ diversionary program that produced higher levels of offender engagement and higher levels of ethical treatment of offenders and victims when compared to the normal court process.
