ABSTRACT
If restorative justice is to succeed in realising more than simply a few programmes on the periphery of the criminal justice system but, instead, to become the philosophy on which the whole justice system is based, it will have to deal with a number of legitimate questions, such as what place punishment would have in a justice system based on restorative justice. This issue has recently been the subject of fierce debate among restorative justice proponents. At first view, the debate has drawn a clear dividing line within the group of restorative justice protagonists: those who believe that punishment is part of restorative justice (e.g. Braithwaite, Duff, Daly, Barton and Dignan), and those who argue that punishment has no place at all in such a system (e.g. Wright and Walgrave). However, when we take a closer look at the content of this discussion, it seems almost to be mere bickering about words: what some call punishment, others call restorative sanctions.
