‘Transforming justice’: challenges for restorative justice in an era of punishment-based corrections

Scholars of restorative justice have long debated its theoretical relationship with formal criminal justice. This analysis critically examines the range of sociostructural conditions in contemporary society that have halted the spread of restorative policies in practice and prevented them from realizing their transformative potential as an alternative system of justice. These factors are attributed largely to a punitive penal culture that is characterized by policy-making based on penal populism, the governance of risk and a managerialist criminal justice agenda; and the widespread co-optation of restorative programs by the state. This broad argument is explored in the context of two particular case studies – recent developments in youth justice and in sexual offending respectively in England and Wales and elsewhere. This examination ultimately highlights challenges for restorative justice in the current risk-driven penal climate and advocates a need to re-evaluate its relationship with formal state justice.

Punitiveness and Political Culture: Notes from Some Small Countries

Green’s (2007, 2008, 2009) recent comparative work on child-on-child homicides in England and Norway has drawn attention to political-cultural explanations to account for differences in levels of state punitiveness. His work finds support for the distinction made by Arend Lijphart (1999) between consensus and majoritarian democracy, through his argument that English majoritarian political culture created powerful incentives to exploit the homicide of James Bulger in ways that were not present in Norway. Drawing on comparative research in Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand, this article joins with Green in enlisting political culture as an important explanatory variable yet challenges the usefulness of Lijphart’s typology in explaining penal difference.