Punitive restoration: Rehabilitating restorative justice

Abstract

Restorative justice is an increasingly popular approach to punishment for academics and policymakers as an effective and cost-efficient alternative to traditional sentencing. This essay argues that restorative justice is too constrained by its limited applicability to both offender types and offence categories as well as its being perceived by the public as overly lenient. It is argued that these problems can be overcome by incorporating a more punitive range of outcome possibilities that I call punitive restoration. This can broaden the applicability of restorative justice without sacrificing public confidence to better embed restorative justice within the criminal justice system.