criminal

The Future of Restorative Justice In the near future, the number of cases directed to neighborhood justice centers and victim–offender reconciliation programs will grow because there is a movement toward informality throughout the criminal justice system. In practice, informality is marked by a preference for unwritten, flexible, commonsense, discretionary procedures tailored to fit particular cases. […]

Pros and Cons from the Victim’s Point of View A father is brutally murdered. After 20 years his killer comes up for parole. The victim’s family is consumed by intense feelings of anger, vulnerability, and insecurity. They avail themselves of their right to address the parole board, and the convict is not released. But a

The Peacemaking Process: How Reconciliation Programs Work Restorative justice projects are experimenting with four different approaches (see Dzur, 2011; and Armour, 2012). The most numerous is victim– offender mediation. Both parties engage in a structured dialogue that is facilitated by a trained mediator. This intermediary is more often a trained V I C T IMS

A Brief History of Restorative Justice Restorative justice embraces themes important to the victims’ rights movement, especially notifica- tion, empowerment, direct involvement, offender accountability, and receiving restitution. This emerging challenge to the prevailing punitive par- adigm incorporates some traditions that helped blunt crime’s negative repercussions centuries ago, before the state asserted its authority to dom-

TOWARD RESTORATIVE JUSTICE What might happen if victims met with their victimizers or people closely related to their offen- ders? Could anything constructive come from these encounters? A social movement advocating restorative justice believes victims would be better off if they explored the healing potential of such meetings in order to get past the understandable

The Appeal of Retaliatory Justice Once in a while, a case that appears in the news serves as a reminder that victims and their allies can go too far and unleash violence to avenge past wrongs—and still garner public support for their misdeeds: A man in court is accused of molesting several young boys at

Vigilantism(s) Frontier Origins Vigilantism has a long and ugly history, especially in the Old West and the Deep South. It began in colonial times as a reaction to marauding bands of desperadoes operating along the frontier. In Virginia in the late 1700s, a vigilance committee led by Colonel William Lynch developed a repu- tation for

Victims and Bystanders Sometimes Engage in Retaliatory Justice A nine-year-old girl is allegedly raped on two occasions by her uncle. Her uncle’s son allegedly molests her older brother. Their mother reports these allegations to the police and a bitter family feud ensues. One day, the mother drives to the uncle’s workplace and directly confronts him.

The Vague Line Between Victims Acting in Self-Defense and Using Excessive Force Five young men board a subway train late at night after drinking at a baby shower. They sit across from a number of other young men who had been drinking at a bar and are loud and raucous, and harassing other passengers. One

Trends in Justifiable Homicides, United States , 1988–2013 SOURCES: FBI, UCR, 1988–2013. Unfortunately, the data may not be reliable because of incomplete participation by police depart- ments and inadequate record-keeping by depart- ments that do take part in the annual body count. Investigative reporters uncovered more than 550 police-involved killings between 2007 and 2012 that