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Cies have for many years sought to improve procedures to increase both efficiency for the system and
fairness for the accused – and more recently have sought to make the justice process more accessible
and “user – friendly” for all participants (National Institute) of Justice, 1996). Structural change has
historically taken the form of seemingly endless exercises in bureaucratic reshuffling, and occasionally
more significant, if short – lived, efforts to reduce the size of correctional facilities, control detention
intake, or reduce the number of layers of management have also been attempted (Bazemore, 1998;
Miller, 1994; Swartz, Barton, and Orlando, 1991).

Yet, criminal justice agencies seem to have been among the last to consider popular government
reforms of any kind, and criminal justice agencies have only very recently begun to give serious
consideration to the implications of total quality Management (TQM) for examining client service and
performance outcomes (Bazemore and Cole, 1994; Bazemore and Washington, 1995; Langworthy,
1999). As paramilitary,, top-down organizations, justice agencies are to varyingdegrees allowed, even
expected to, operate as closed systems characterized by secrecy and isolation from communites. After
all, the mission to “fight crime” implies tight control, while the possession of technological hardware
expertise in the “war” on crime may foster an arrogance, which can easily insulate justice professionals
from public scrutiny. Moreover, when crime control and prevention are allowed to be defined as a war
against criminals, and the latter characterized as an invading army, there is little time to bother with the
struggle to define one’s “client” or to identify the communities to be served. Finally, in a domain
allegedly grounded in hierarchical expertise aimed at ensuring public security, there is generally less
room for experimentation as in a “bottom-up” management, or for community input.

It is ironic then that some components of criminal justice system in some communities in the latter half
of the 1990s became involved in one of the most potentially radical efforts to rehink the role of citizens
versus government in the response to crime. Indeed, some criminal justice administrators seemed to be
engaged in a serious effort to both redefine mission and clients, while also reengaging the community in
evaluating outcomes and process (Maloney, 1998; Pennsylvania Juvenile Court Judge’s Commission,
1997). As they did so, some of these managers found themselves at the threshold of a rather more
systemic transformation in which structural, process, and programmatic reform is being driven by a
commitment to new performance outcomes (Bazemore and Washington, 1995; Umbreit and Carey,
1995).

The inspiration for this emerging transformation and reexamination of mission has several influences.
Although the “good government” movements are now having some impact, a more signitificant, earliner
influence was insights from initial conceptualizations of community policing (Sparrow, Moore, and
Kennedy, 1990; Wilson an Kelling, 1982). In the late 1980s, a number of police administrators Crime,
Governance, and Communities.
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And supportive academics declared that the professional or “crime fighting” model of policing was
essentially bankrupt and opted for a community-building and problem-solving agenda (Goldstein, 1990;
Sparrow et al., 1990). While these reform objectives have often not been carried out in implementation
(Grinc, 1994).other components of the criminal justice system-courts, corrections, prosecution, juvenile
justice-now seem interested in exploring a “community justice” approach.

Most influential in the more rcent, deeper rehinking of the community-government relationship in the
response to crime has been the literature and practice associated with what is being variously described
as restorative justice (Bazemore and Umbreit, 1995; Hudson and Galaway, 1996; Zehr, 1990),
community justice (Barajas, 1995; Griffiths and Hamilton, 1996; Stuart, 1996). And rectorative
community justice (Bazemore and Sehiff, 2001; Young, 1995). Beginning inn the 1995, a series of high-
level discussion workgroup meetings and confeences wer hosted by the Office of justice programs (U.S
Department of Justice) at the request of the attorney general. Since the early 1990s, restorative justice
has also sparked national and international discussion and debate in the United States, Canada, New
Zealand, Australia, and several European countries (Bazemore and Walgrave, 1999; Robinson, 1996).

Although the designation of the proposed intervention model is not fixed, I will use the terms
restorative justice and restorative community justice (Bazermore and Schiff, 2001; Young, 1995)
somewhat interchangeably. Restorative justice refers specifically to a way of viewing crime as harm to
vicims and communities, and “justice” as an effort to repair that harm (Zehr, 1990). The “community
justice” designation rafes more generally to a preference for neighborhood-based, more acccssible, and
less formal justice service (NIJ, 1996) that to the greatest extet possible thift the locus of the justice
response to those most affected by crime. Hence, restorative community justice intervention also
engages the community, and victims, as well as offenders, in problem-oriented and preventative rather
than simply reactive responses, and attempts to,as much as possible, turn responsibility for justice
solutions back to communities. To do this, community justice redefines the role of justice agencies as
oneaimed at strengthening the capacity of citizens and community groups to carry out these
responsibilities and supporting them in doing so (Barajas, 1995; Bazemore and Schiff, 1996,2001).

Despite these and other influences, perhaps the greatest motivation for current reform efforts inn
criminal justice seems to be coming from a growing realization of the limits of current intervention
paradigms. Supporters of justice reforms based on restorative and community justice concepts seem
increasingly aware of the reserictions placed on options for crime prevention and control by current
policy lenses (Ingram and Schneideer, 1991). They also seem aware of the parameters these impose on
visions for meaningful reform.

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Crime and the Criminal justice policy “Lens”

Throughout the United States, criminal courts and other “front-end” criminal justice agencies function
to support what has been referred to a “people-processing economy” (Hassenfeld and Cheung, 1985).
These organizations move individual offenders, or files that describe the crimes they have committed,
through a system that sorts cases according to both administrative rules and informal agreements
( Eisentein and Jacobs, 1991). These processing arrangements ensure that courts and other agencies
maintain a stable, but not overwhelming, workload by dismissing or “diverting” the lion’s share of cases
– which may receive generally lasser sanctions than those cases processed through the court. Once in
the court process, formal procedural rules seek to protect defendants in the determination of guilt and
to ensure uniformity in sentencing once guilt is established.

At the end of the court process, or the completion of a plea agreement or diversion process for those
who do not make it to court, offenders find themselves in jail, halfway houses, prison, or under
probation or some form of community supervision. Some – especially young offenders who remain
under the control of juvenile corrections system – will also be required to participate in one or more of a
variety of treatment programs.

Both the process of deciding where these offenders go after a finding or admission of guilt, ad the
intervention that occurs once they ge there, takes place in general isolation. Justice system professionals
are protected from public scrutiny by procedural rules, but also by a complex bureaucratic structure and
system of informal relationships (Eisentein and Jacobs, 1991), which even core participants find difficult
to understand. The criminal justice decision-making process used to determine sanctions and
inteventions intended to punish or correct criminal behavior are in turn limited by a narrow vision of the
damagecrime causes should be assessed and of what might be accomplished in responding to crime.

Asking Limited Questions

Currently, when a acrime is committed, three primary questions are asked : Who did it, what laws were
broken, and what should be done to the offender? (Zehr,1990). The latte question is generally followed
with another question about the most appropriate punishment and/or most appropriate treatment or
service to promote rehabilitation. The question of punishment or treatment has been a primary
preoccupation of criminal justice dialogue for the past four decades.

Indeed, modern criminal justice ideologies-conservative, liberal, libertarian, “just deserts” – can be easily
grouped into general categories based on different views of how this question of intervention should be
addressed. In the past two decades several of these ideologies appear to have coalesced at the policy
level around a broad framework that gives priorty to punishment and lesser empha Crime, Governance ,
and Communities

129

Sis to rehabilitatve goals, places central focus on “desert” as the primary rationale for decision making,
and expands the use of inccarcertion at all levels of criminal and juvenile justice in the United States
(Bazemore, 1991; feld, 1990, 1993; Tonry, 1994). Despite a continuing failure to find clear empirical
evidence in support of the deterrent value of incarceration, this punitive paradigm (Cullen and Wright,
1995) has attained dominant influence in national and state policy. In response, many corrections
professionals and their allies continue to promote an individual treatment model of rehabilitation and
have emphasized the need for treatment and service which, they argue, if adequately funded and
administered with regard to what works best for specific populations of offenders, can reduce crime by
rehabilitating offenders (Cullen and Gilbet, 1982; Krisberg, 1988). Other critics of the new puinitiveness
in criminal justice point to both the expenses and the injustice of these policies, especially as they have
impacted minority communities (Tonry, 1994).

The box of punishment and reatment

But the punitive paradigm has become popular not because of the efficiency of punishment but
because, in the minds of policy makers and the public, punitive sanctions seem to be at least somewhat
related to the offense. Treatment modalities, on the other hand, appear solely related to the needs of
the offender. Treatment in juvenile justice programs, for example, often asks little of their clients
beyond participating in counseling, remedial services, or recreational program. It Is therefore difficult to
convince most citizens that treatment program provide anyting other than benefits to offenders (e.g.,
services, educational and recreational activities), and there is little in the message of the treatment
response which attempts to communicate to offenders that they have harmed someone and should take
action to repair damages wreaked upon the victim(s).

Advocates of reaffirming rehabilitation as the dominant agenda for criminal justice intervention (e.g.,
Cullen and Gilbert, 1982) argue that the system is failing because it lacks adequate resources. Critics,
and many defenders of criminal justice as well, now argue that most justice systems, if underfunded, are
also underconceptualized and have failed to articulate a clear vision of success. As “closed system”
paradigm, both the individual treatment and the new retributive models are conceptually and practically
insular and the one dimensional.

They are one-dimensional because they fail to address the various, and multiple, interests of
communities in the aftermath of crime. Too often the treatment and punishment intervention
paradigms reduce the justice function and process to a simplistic choice between helping or hunting
offenders, and hence fail to address and balance the multiple justice needs of communities. While the
punitive approach to crime may appease the public demand for retribution, it does nothing to
rehabilitate or reintegrate offenders. Punishment is often inappropriantely used, and overused, resulting
in well-documented negative effects. Retributive punishment may ironically encourage offenders to
focus on themselves rather than their victims, and increasing its severity may have little or no impact if
we have miscalculated the extent to which sanctions such as incarceration are actualiy experienced as
punishment (Wright, 1991).

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The punishment and treatment models are insular because they are essentially offende-focused. Neither
addresses the needs of crime victims and victimized communities, and both fail to engage victims and
other citizens as “clients” of the system or stakeholders in the justice process. Whether treatment
programs, and professional experts, most justice system effectively exclude victims and other
community members from what could be meaningfull roles in more effective sanctioning, rehabilitation,
and public safety enhancement processes.
Increasingly, a growing number of citizens, criminal justice professionals, and policy makers are
beginning to question whether the policy lens of the treatment-punishment paradigms is inadequate to
address the complex needs of communities in the aftermath of crime. In one way or another answering
the questions who did it, what laws were broken, and what must be done to the offender will fail to
meet expectations that communities have of their justice systems. At a minimum, communities expect
justice systems to support them in efforts to sanction crime, improve safey, meet the needs of crime
victims, and reintegrate offendes who have been held accountable for their crimes and improved their
capacity to function as productive citizens.

But treatment and punishment models are not the only option for criminal justice intervention. In
contrast, a community-oriented justice system would involve citizens in setting clear limits on antisocial
behavior and determining consequences for offender. Such a system would also work toward building
strong, crime resistant communities where residents feel safe and toward meeting victims’ needs for
reparation, validation, and healing. It would emphasis the need for relationship building and the for
active experiential involvement of young of fender in work, service learning, and other productive roles
that provide more structured pathways to facilitate bonding with law-biding community adults. Finally, a
restorative community justice would also articulate new and more meaningful roles for employers, civic
groups, faith communities, families, and other citizens in the entire justice process.

RESTORATIVE COMMUNITY JUSTICE

While current criminal justice system strunggle to answer questions of guilt. Lawbreaking, and
the response to offenders, restorative justice views crime through a lens, which suggests that much
more is at stake (Zehr,1990). What is important about crime is that it causes harm to real people: and it
damages relationship. If this is the case, “justice” responses cannot simply focus on offender

Crime , government, and communities

131

Punishment or treatment. If crime can be viewed as a “wound” on the community, justice must focus on
healing the wound (Van Ness and Strong, 1997).

The resoratie justice response to crime can be best described as a three dimensional,
collaborative process. This vision is best undertood by examining what restorative justice might “look
like” for victims, community, and offender as stakehoulder and co-particpants in this process. For the
victims, restorative justice offers the hope of restitution or other forms of reparation, information about
the case, the opportunity to be heard, and input into the case as well as expanded opportunities for
involvement and influence. For the community, there is the promise of reduced fear and safer
neighborhoods, a more accessible justice process, and accountability, as well as the obligation for
involvement and participation in sanctioning crime, reintegrating offenders, and crime prevention and
control. Because crime is viewed as a result of a breakdown in social bonds that link individuals and
communities, and is, in addition, a cause of a further weakening in these bonds, the “justice” response
to crime at the community level must also involve citizens and community groups in repairing damaged
relationships or building new relationships (Van Ness, Carlson, Crawford, and strong, 1989). For the
offender, restorative justice requires accountability in the form of obligations to repaire the harm to
individual victims and victimized communities, and the opportunity to develop new competencies, social
skills, and the capacity to avoid future crime (Bazemore, 1996; Dooley, 1995)

Historical Overview

The principles and apporoaches now being referred to as restorative justice are not new. In fact, pre-
state societies appear to have made use of two primary responses to crime. The first, based primarily on
vengeance, was associated with repayment of harm with harm. In addition, as Weitekamp argues,
virtually allacephalous societies utilized a variety of settlement and dispute resolution practices than
typically included some effort to repair the harm (Van Ness et al., 1989). Generally, these practices,
which might today be called “restorative,” focused on some form of repayment or restitution to the
victims or his/her family. Indeed, current restorative pratices are grounded in codes of conduct and
practices that have been at the core of many religious and ethical traditions (Van Ness, 1993; Zehr,
1990) Which were formalized and detailed in a variety of ancient justice documents, including, for
example : the Babylonian code of Hammurabi (c. 1700 B.C,). Which prescribed restitution in property
effense cases ; the Roman Law Of the Twelve Tables (449 B.C,). Which required convicted thieves to pay
double the value of stolen goods, and more if the thief had concealed the stolen goods in his or her
home; the Law Of Ethelbert (c. A.D. 600), containing detailed restitution schedules that differentiated
the vaue of the four front teeth from those next to them, and those teeth from all the rest ; and Various
Hebrew Codes (and dispute resolution pratices), which emphasized the importance of peace, or Shalom,
in the community (Van Ness et al., 1989; Van Ness and Strong, 1997). Other examples include modern
European pratcties and Native American system of justice administration in place today.

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The “New” Restorative justice movement

Although reparation in the form of restitution and community service had been used occasionally by
U.S. courts in the twentieth century, these sanctions did not become widely popular as sentencing
options until the 1970s. Restitution and community service, and to a lesser extent victim-offender
mediation, have been used since the 1970s with some regularity in U.S. criminal and juvenile courts and
are often administered by probation and community diversion programs (Galaway and Hudson, 1990;
Schncinder, 1986; Umbriet and Coates, 1994).

In the 1990s, these and other reparative sanctions and associated confliet resulation processes such as
victims-offender mediation again began receiving a high level of interest as a part of a broader
restorative justice movement. Those familiar with criminal justice systems know that programs such as
restitution and community service and related reparative sanctions that could be considered the core of
restorative justice intervention are now in common use by court and correctional agencies throughout
the country (see Figure 7.1). In addition, today a wider “menu” of practices and programs including
family group conferencing (FGC), victims impact panels, and community sanctioning boards has been
added to the core of restitution, community service, and victims-offender mediation options (see Figure
7.2 for a descriptions of restorative sanctioning practices). But, while any justice agency can add new
programs, programmatic reform in the absence of change in values and priorities is unlikely to lead to
restorative outcomes, and the reality, unfortunately, is that in justice systems more concerned with
incapacitation, deterrence, and offender-focused interventions, restorative practices and programs
remain on the margins, and generally receuve low priority. If only 10 percent of offenders are referred
to a court’s restitution program. For example, and similar proportions complete meaningful community
service, or meet with their victims, the jurisdiction can hardly be said to be “restorative.” Although the
restorative justice framework has been developed andx refined “from the ground up,” based on a
continuing process of examining innovative programs and processes such us restitution, community
service, victim-offender mediation, and restorative conferencing (Braithwaite and Mugford, 1994; Zehr,
1990), programs are not ends in themselves but simply a means to achieve outcomes that should flow
from a clear understanding of community and other client needs (Bazemore and Umbreit, 1995; see
Goldstein, 1990).

What’s Really “New” ? Programmatic, Systemic, and Holistic Reform

Few modern goverment reforms have been spurred by community input. They have instead been
system-driven, typically top-down, and reactive responses to

Figure 7.1

“What Does It Look Like?” In a Restorative Justice System

Crime Victims:

 Receive support, assistance, compensation information, and services.

 Receive restitution and/or other reparation from the offender.
 Are involved and are encouraged to give input at all points in the system and to direct input into
how the offender will repair the harm done.
 Have the opportunity to face the offenders and to tell their story to offenders and others if they
so desire.
 Feel satisfied with the justice process.
 Provide guidance and consultation to justice professionals on planning and advisory groups.

Offenders:
 Complete restitution to their victims.
 Provide meaningful service to repay the debt to their comunities.
 Must face the personal harm caused by their crimes by participating in victin/offender
mediation, if the victims is willing, or through other victim awareness process
 Complete work experience and active and productive tasks which increase skills and improve
the community.
 Are monitored and supported by community edults as well as justice professionals and are
supervised to the greatest extent possible in the community.
 Improve decision-making skills and have opportunities to help others

Citizens, Families, and Community Groups:

 Are involved to the greatest extent possible in holding offenders accountable (e.g., rehabilitation
and community safety initiatives).
 Work with offenders on local community service projects.
 Provide support to victims.