ABSTRACT
Restorative justice means restoring victims, a more victim-centred criminal justice system, as well as restoring offenders and restoring community. For offenders, restoring a sense of security and empowerment is often bound up with employment, the feeling of having a future, achieving some educational success, sporting success, indeed any kind of success. Restorative justice aims to restore harmony based on a feeling that justice has been done. Restoring harmony alone, while leaving an underlying injustice to fester unaddressed, is not enough. Everywhere in the world, restorative ideals have suffered serious setbacks because of the globalization of the idea of a centralized state that takes central control of justice and rationalizes it into a punitive regime. The social movement for restorative justice does practical work to weld an amalgam that is relevant to the creation of contemporary urban multicultural republics.
