Book Review: Critical Issues in Restorative Justice

As the influence of restorative justice on criminal justice expands, committed restorative justice advocates are recognizing the need for a more critical approach in order to compare the vision against the reality. Howard Zehr and Barb Toews believe that if restorative justice is to retain its integrity then threats to its ‘soul’ must be confronted. Restorative justice might, for example, have unintended consequences that compromise its veracity or it may retain its integrity but be marginalized and ineffective. To this end Zehr and Toews have invited an international group of writers to contribute a critical perspective through addressing a set of questions about restorative justice. The book appears, at first glance, to be overly ambitious in the range of ‘critical issues’ related to restorative justice, which it covers in 31 chapters. However each chapter is brief and addresses very specific issues, which are likely to be raised by practitioners or students. These questions are helpfully included in the Appendix. The book is divided into six main sections: principles and concepts; stakeholder issues; governments and systems; practice and practitioners; indigenous and religious traditions; and social justice. Each part also has a short introduction describing the scope of the topic and, because the intention is that the book should make a contribution to an ongoing dialogue, each chapter ends with a correspondence address. One of the strengths of this book is that it not only includes some of the key theorists and researchers in criminology and criminal justice, but also an interesting range of writers who have experienced restorative justice at grassroots level. The result is a useful collection of ideas, which is likely to contribute to both theoretical and policy debates. Part 1 explores the problems and possibilities that emerge from the lack of a standard definition of restorative justice. An interesting contribution is a chapter by Val Napoleon, who writes from the perspective of a member of an aboriginal community. She asks ‘who defines restorative justice?’. She challenges a Western model of reality, which, she suggests, is a model of the cause B O O K R E V I E W S