Abstract:
Restorative justice is both a philosophy and loosely aligned set of interventions that focus less on crime as the breaking of laws than as the harming or breaking of human relationships. Emerging in the 1970s and 1980s as an alternative to more traditional youth and adult justice practices, restorative justice interventions such as victim–offender mediation, sentencing circles, and family group conferencing are largely organized around the principles of victim participation and redress, offender accountability and reintegration, and community participation in local justice practices.