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Restorative Justice

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Religion Matters

Abstract

Restorative justice has been described as one of the most significant innovations in the administration of criminal justice to have arisen in the modern era. From small scale experimental beginnings in the early 1970s, it has since grown into a global social movement for change, embracing a diversity of discursive and peacemaking practices in a wide range of settings. While the story behind the emergence of the modern restorative justice movement is contested, there is good reason not to discount the contribution of religious faith to the genesis, theory and practice of restorative justice. In fact, without the influence of core Christian values and beliefs, the central tenets of restorative justice might not emerge with such clarity and conviction.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The quote continues, “The more we are emotionally drawn to a religious ethic of love, the more we will be motivated to make restorative justice work. The more we have both a longing for some conflation of love or compassion and justice (and some theoretical framework within which to situate the possibility of that conflation), the more we will be motivated to persist in the project of justice-as-repair. The more we are committed to an ethic of nonviolence, the more we suffer at the thought of inflicting suffering on others. The more we are drawn to the value of harmony, the more the aspirations of restorative institutions will appear worthwhile to us.”.

  2. 2.

    Zehr’s explanation is cited in full in Gade (2018, 30).

  3. 3.

    There is a vast literature on the use of restorative practices in education. For a recent stocktake by some of its pioneers, see Thorsborne et al. (2019).

  4. 4.

    “To refer to restorative justice as a social movement is not to say that restorative justice programs comprise a unified body of actors or that restorative justice philosophies form an undifferentiated body of ideas…this is clearly not the case for restorative justice, but this is also not true for most, if any, social movements. Social movements are networks in which actors with varying interpretations of what the movement is about, and different levels of commitment to the movement, negotiate the meaning of a linked set of ‘big ideas’ as well as their ideal application in everyday life…Thus a social movement is not a single group or organization but rather a host of individual and collective agents engaged in a process of movement definition, issue or grievance articulation, activism and program implementation.” (Woolford 2009: 19).

  5. 5.

    Highly influential in inspiring this new wave of Anabaptist peace activism was John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus (1972), along with his many other publications, such as The Original Revolution (1971). See further Koontz and Alexis-Baker (2009).

  6. 6.

    For a briefer discussion, see Marshall (2018b: 200–225).

  7. 7.

    Cited in Noakes-Duncan (2017: 105).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Christopher D. Marshall

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  1. Christopher D. Marshall
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Correspondence to Christopher D. Marshall .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Adelaide Law School, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Paul Babie

  2. School of Law, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Rick Sarre

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Marshall, C.D. (2020). Restorative Justice. In: Babie, P., Sarre, R. (eds) Religion Matters. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2489-9_7

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