There has been a growing concern in recent years regarding the increasing number of offenders and victims in urgent need of mental health treatment and social services, some of whom are at high risk of future violence if they do not receive the evidence-based interventions they urgently need. In the past two decades, professional social workers have made significant progress in advocating for and obtaining critically needed social services for juvenile offenders, adult offenders, and victims of violent crimes.
Restorative justice refers to several strategies for resolving conflicts peacefully and advocating for the rights of victims and compassionate treatment of offenders. Although restorative justice is associated in the public mind more with the correctional arena than with child welfare, the principles of this philosophy cut across all areas of social work, wherever there is conflict caused by wrongdoing that needs to be resolved.
Restorative justice is an umbrella term for a method of handling disputes with its roots in the rituals of indigenous populations and traditional religious practices. Rather than emphasizing the rules that have been broken and the punishment that should be imposed, restorative approaches tend to focus primarily on the persons who have been harmed.
A three-pronged system of justice, restorative justice is a non-adversarial approach usually monitored by a trained forensic social worker who seeks to offer justice to the (1) individual victim, (2) the offender, and (3) the community, all of whom have been harmed by a crime or other form of wrongdoing.
A restorative justice process does not necessarily rule out all forms of punishment (e.g., fine, incarceration, and probation), but its focus remains firmly on restorative, forward-looking, and least restrictive alternatives. Instead of incarceration, for example, the option of community service coupled with substance abuse treatment might be favored. Current trends in dispensing justice fall within three general areas:
The peacemaking powers of the restorative process are well recognized. Instituting such programs entails a new way of thinking about justice and a change of heart as well as a change of mind. Punishment, forensic social workers say, is the purview of criminal justice not social work. Forensic social workers are in the business of curing social ills, righting wrongs, and making reparations to victims while helping perpetrators discover a better way.
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