From philosophical abstraction to restorative action, from senseless retribution to meaningful restitution: just deserts and restorative justice revisited

The current rhetoric of just deserts is a curiously abstract, formal doctrine, divorced from social context and from any vision of social objectives beyond ‘law and order’, which it does not obviously or easily achieve … If we divorce the notion of proportionate penalties from social context and social purpose, we are left with little more than punishment (or as Christie (1982) reminds us, the graduated infliction of harm or pain) without any clear vision of what it is trying to achieve.