Restorative Justice and Retributive Justice

The banishment penalty reflected European political and constitutional polycentrism and its interrelations with a society that for a long time had been characterized by conflicts between factions and family groups. Reaching a lasting peace between the
opponents was an essential aim of the vendetta system, as was ensuring the tranquillity and safekeeping of community values. The system was endowed with a pronounced juridical dimension that at the constitutional level interacted with the role played by the courts as well as with trial and customary rites. These rites aimed at managing conflicts between opposing groups by distancing those who broke social stability, through banishment, if necessary.
  During the sixteenth century, a series of important social, demographic, and economic problems reshaped the conception of social control and order, as well as the long established management of penal justice. No longer embedded in its traditional constitutional dimension and made more extreme with regard to both repression and rewards, the banishment penalty became an efficient instrument for imposing new political legitimacy. Faced with these transformations, bandits quickly took on the physiognomy of actual outlaws, portrayed as political opponents to be dealt with by any repressive instrument available.

This is the 2nd edition of Gavrielides’ 2007 monograph “Restorative Justice Theory & Practice: Addressing the Discrepancy”, a ground-breaking book that examines the harmful gap between the restorative justice theory and its application covering the UK, the U.S., Europe, and internationally.

Data were obtained from four international surveys with over 300 restorative justice practitioners, using a combination of qualitative methodologies, including questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The 2nd edition provides critical updates for restorative justice research, policy and practice.

Restorative justice projects strive to restore peace after a crime has been committed by involving victims, offenders and community representatives in dialogue. Previous studies reviewed by Dr. Gavrielides have credited these programmes with such benefits as lower recidivism, and higher levels of satisfaction with outcomes among victims, offenders and community representatives, compared to the traditional criminal justice system. However, the author’s seven-year research programme uncovered a pervasive gap between restorative justice principles and current restorative justice operations. This gap is blamed for widespread difficulties such as insufficient funding for restorative justice, inadequate training and accreditation of practitioners, lack of faith and commitment among staff, and a tendency for restorative justice over time to become increasingly similar to the standard criminal justice system. Dr. Gavrielides warns that if these problems are not corrected, the original values and benefits of restorative justice may never be realised.

Book Reviews
“In a time when restorative justice has been embraced with unbridled enthusiasm by virtually every criminal justice network and dispute resolution stakeholder outside of the criminal justice system, Theo Gavrielides presents us with an original, comprehensive, and essential examination of the subject. This work should be read by anyone and everyone who is the least bit interested in the future health of the restorative justice movement.” Prof. John Winterdyk, Ph.D. Department of Justice Studies, Chair, Mount Royal College, Canada

“Theo Gavrielides has provided a constructive and thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of one of the most significant contemporary developments in thinking about criminal justice.” Professor Nicola Lacey, LSE, UK

“Restorative justice is a noble concept, but if the actual practice does not match the ideal, it could be discredited. That would be a great loss. Theo Gavrielides has brought together some challenging thoughts about this danger…” Dr. Martin Wright, European Forum of restorative justice and Restorative Justice Consortium, UK and EU

It is a concise, engaging, innovative and informative book for practitioners and scholars. This comprehensive introduction to restorative justice provides a much-needed textbook for an increasingly popular area of study and practice, which can be used as a basis for further theoretical development and elaboration on the concept’s limitations and accountability. Dr. Effi Lambropoulou Professor of Criminology Department of Sociology, Panteion University of Social and Politic, Greece

As a restorative justice practitioner for ten years, I continue to be impressed with the in-depth research Theo Gavrielides does in the field of restorative justice. He meets the challenges with provocative and cutting edge topics directly and succinctly… The struggle of theory vs. practice has been a difficult one in the field since restorative justice began mostly with practice. Gavrielides approaches this struggle with wisdom of historical roots and with encouragement that restorative justice is developing theory to catch up with practice. Linda Harvey Program Director and Founder of the Restorative Justice Council on Sexual Misconduct in Faith Communities, USA

“Dr. Theo Gavrielides’ book provides a special journey from the underlying theoretical foundations to the daily practice of restorative justice. By his thought-provoking and critical approach, he gifts the restorative justice field with an essential analysis that bridges theory and practice in an interdisciplinary and multisectoral way” Borbala Fellegi, researcher and lecturer at the ELTE University, consultant of the Ministry of Justice in Hungary in the field of restorative justice, Hungary

This mixed‐methods study examined how adolescents understand and evaluate different ways to address intergroup harms in schools. In individual interviews, 77 adolescents (M age = 16.49 years; 39 girls, 38 boys) in Bogotá, Colombia, responded to hypothetical vignettes wherein a rival group at school engaged in a transgression against their group. Adolescents reported that students who were harmed should and would talk to school authorities, but also noted they would likely retaliate. In terms of teacher‐sanctioned responses to harm, youth endorsed compensation most strongly, followed by apologies, and rated suspension least positively. Youths' explanations for their endorsement of different disciplinary practices reflected varied concerns, including their perceptions of how justice is best achieved and how restoration could be attained.

This Article develops a model that integrates restorative justice within the conventional punitive system of criminal responsibility and punishment. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we demonstrate that restorative justice should form a synergy with retributivism, deterrence, incapacitation, and other punitive goals of criminal law. We show how this synergy can be formed, illustrate its operation and identify its potential contribution to social welfare.

Apologies play an important role in forgiveness, but the pathway from apology to forgiveness is unclear. Many researchers use Goffman’s model of the corrective interchange, or models derived from it to guide their research. This model is based on the assumption that offenders apologise to victims who accept these apologies and that this leads to forgiveness. The acceptance of the apology is therefore central in this model, so we undertook a systematic literature review to determine how researchers conceptualise and measure apology acceptance and found a lack of clarity around the construct. We addressed this theoretical uncertainty by exploring whether lay people distinguish between apology acceptance and forgiveness, and if they do, how they describe apology acceptance. We use contemporary neuro-cognitive theories that explain social and moral decision-making and behaviour to integrate the themes we identified to develop a preliminary theoretical explanation of how the apology acce...

Formal criminal justice systems worldwide have been increasingly incorporating restorative justice. As such, it is important to consider the state of knowledge on restorative justice, reflecting on that which is known and that which remains largely unknown. This chapter provides an overview of the academic literature associated with restorative justice to date, including: how restorative procedures differ from court-based justice responses; empirical research assessing restorative interventions; and theoretical explanations of the effects of restorative justice relative to court-based models. The latter part of the chapter is dedicated to the importance of better understanding public perceptions of appropriate justice. We draw attention to the discrepancy between legal and lay notions of justice; specifically, that legal notions of justice revolve around deliberative information processing, whereas lay notions of justice often stem from intuitive responses leading to retributive impulses. We argue that laypersons' retributive motivations present a challenge to restorative justice, but that psychological research devoted to better understanding lay decision-making and justice heuristics offers a means to advance the long-term viability of restorative procedures. We conclude by suggesting more focused research directions that would progress the current state of knowledge, highlighting the value of experimental methods in this area of research.

The book deals with the relations between anger, emotions and trial rites in sixteenth century. After a general introduction on the values of emotions, justice and anger the book presents the story of Marcantonio Trissino, the grandson of Giangiorgio Trissino, the famous man of letters and humanist. In the year 1583 Marcantonio, abruptily and amazingly, killed Giulio Cesare Trissino outside Vicenza's dome while he was surrounded and protected by numerous friends and followers. Giulio Cesare Trissino was suspected by the public opinion being the mandant of Ciro Trissino's murder, the father of Marcantonio, killed in february 1576 in his palladian villa located in Cornedo, a Vicentine village, by a group of goons, masked and dressed in black suits. During the trial instructed in Padua by appointment of the Counsel of ten, Marcantonio Trissino defended his violent behavior advocating that his mind was run over by anger and furor. The trial rhetoric vehicles the great themes of vendetta and honor and introduce to the tensions between retributive and restorative justice. The second part of the book presents some of the documents which availed to the lawyers for preparing Marcantonio Trissino's defence.