Restorative justice has developed rapidly from being a barely known term to occupying a central role in debates on the future of criminal justice. But as it has become part of the mainstream of debate, so new tensions and issues have emerged. One of the most crucial issues is to find an appropriate combination of restorative justice, based essentially on informal deliberation, and the law.
The purpose of this book is to analyse the several dimensions to this issue. It explores the social and ethical foundations of restorative justice, seeks to position it in relation to both rehabilitation and punishment, and examines the possibility of developing and incorporating restorative justice as the mainstream response to crime in terms of the principles of constitutional democracy. Amongst the questions it addresses are the following:
In this book a distinguished team of contributors consider this crucial set of relationships between restorative justice and the law, building upon papers and discussions at the fifth international restorative justice conference in Leuven, Belgium, in September 2001.
