The Punitive Restoration Alternative
This section presents and defends a particular approach to achieving restorative justice in a novel way: the idea of punitive restoration.31 Punitive restoration offers a distinctive view about restorative justice. It is a single practice taking the form of a confer- ence setting, where the victim, the offender, their support networks, and some local community members are represented. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed, or threatened, by criminal offences.32 This aim is accomplished through recognition of the crime as a public wrong leading to a contractual
arrangement agreed upon by stake- holders. Punitive restoration is puni- tive because it extends the available options for a restorative contract to achieve restoration and this may include forms of hard treatment, such as drug and alcohol treatment in custody, suspended sentences, or brief imprisonment. These claims will now be defended.
Restorative justice approaches lack clarity about what is to be restored and how that restoration should be achieved. Andrew von Hirsch and Andrew Ashworth argue that restora- tive justice “suffers from unduly sweeping definition of aims and
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insufficient specifications of limits” with a conceptually incoherent model.33 In fact, its claim to bring res- toration to a community may be criti- cized because restorative approaches do not insist on community involve- ment and the overwhelming majority of restorative meetings are victim– offender mediations where the com- munity is excluded.
Punitive restoration operates with a more specific understanding about restoration.34 The model of punitive restoration is a conference meeting, not unlike restorative conferencing. This model is justified on grounds of an important principle of stakehold- ing: that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say in decisions about them.35 Stakeholding has direct relevance for sentencing policy. Stakeholders are those individ- uals with a stake in penal outcomes. These persons include victims, if any, their support networks, and the local community. Each marks himself or herself out as a potential stakeholder in virtue of his or her relative stake.
This view of restoration endorses the primary working definition from Marshall that is used by most proponents of restorative justice con- sidered above and restated here: “Restorative justice is a process whereby all parties with a stake in a par- ticular offence come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the after- math of the offence and its impli- cations for the future.”36 Restorative justice has often been understood as a procThe Punitive Restoration Alternative