Does Restorative Justice Prevent Crime Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Does Restorative Justice Prevent Crime - Essay Example Researchers and authors have critically argued that although significant number of attempts has been made by advocates of Restorative Justice in contrasting this model with various other approaches of justice, this model has suffered from several pitfalls. One of the most important pitfalls has been that those attempts have raised different meanings. These meanings have been attributed to different retribution and to rehabilitation (Mantle et al., 2005: p.2). Principles and practices incorporate a view of crime in terms of a conflict between individuals, instead of conflicts between the state and the offender. The aspect which is closely associated with this view tells that the governments’ responsibility with respect to providing security to individuals, crimes and conditions of disorder need to be shared â€Å"among all the members of the community†. This justice approach has been considered as a humanitarian approach which â€Å"brings to the foreground ambitions of forgiveness, healing, reparation and reintegration† (Mantle et al., 2005:p.3). Hence, this approach includes the offender as well as the victim, their families, friends and community representatives. This urges offenders and the victim to make face-to-face contacts with each other. These aspects of mutual interaction have been used to mark voices of both victim and the offender with regard to their experiences as well as understanding of the crime. These interactions have been introduced in this approach for the purpose of reaching a mutually acceptable solution to the problem (Mantle et al., 2005:p.3). Advocates of this unique approach of justice argue that mental lockdown of the crime is not required in the modern world and society; rather what is required is the justice policy which will repair the damage caused by the crime. Due to this reason, in the restorative justice all parties associated with the crime are incorporated into the justice procedure. The level of confli ct, generated by the system or procedure of criminal justice, has been reduced by the restorative justice. These conflicts arise when harsh punishments are provided to people who belong to the powerless social outcasts of nation. According to the advocates of Restorative Justice, old or traditional modes of justice and methods of punishment have failed considerably to provide a significant system of justice for offenders, victims and others (Siegel, 2011:p.285). However, restorative justice has been praised by various researchers with respect to the fact that it helps in the process of increasing the likelihood of the victim of reporting the crime and also provides different alternative punishments to sanction which ‘get tough’ on these offenders from their respective communities (Sullivan and Tifft, 2006:p.490). Restorative justice has widely been used by NGOs across the globe for providing proper and effective justice to women and children (mainly). Various rights in regard to society, such as rights to work, rights to speech etc., have been developed with greater use of Restorative Justice. Greater use of restorative justice has made the criminal justice system more effective in terms of reducing the level of occurrence of crimes in the society. For instance, in the United States of America, greater use of