Justified criticism, misunderstanding, or important steps on the road to acceptance?

Since restorative justice, in its modern incarnation, is more than twenty-one years old, we can say that, if it has not come of age, then it is certainly coming of age, and so ought to be able to withstand criticism. The restorative justice ¹ movement is fortunate to have some candid friends; there are also some commentators who criticize a version of restorative justice which, if it happens, represents poor practice, or which we believe represents misunderstanding. This may be because critics are making unwarranted assumptions about what actually happens; or they may be generalizing from a particular piece of bad practice which advocates of restorative justice would be equally unhappy with; but they may also identify some potential traps, which we would want to guard against, or into which the restorative justice movement may have already stumbled. This chapter will examine two recent commentaries upon restorative justice. We have chosen one, from the United Kingdom, which focuses on victims’ concerns (Reeves and Mulley 2000); the other, American, paper comes from an offender-based, due process perspective (Delgado 2000). As well as looking at individual comments, we will try to assess the background of the authors’ standpoints, and the implications of these commentaries about the development of restorative justice as a paradigm.