Reintegrative Shaming Theory Essay

All over the globe, restorative justice is gaining popularity in both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. Instead of relying on basic legal intervention to deal with youths’ misbehavior and delinquency, restorative justice focuses on the reconciliation between offenders and victims (book, pg. 86). For decades, the way that various criminal justice systems dealt with juvenile delinquency was mostly based off of criminological theories. In this instance, an understanding of the reintegrative shaming theory is vital to fully understanding restorative justice as a whole. John Braithwaite first proposed the reintegrative shaming theory in 1989. According to this theory, societies will have lower crime rates if they communicate shame about crime more effectively. In turn, societies will have more violence if the violent behavior is not seen as shameful. Basically, Braithwaite was proposing through this theory that a society’s structure and culture can influence individual deviant acts through the process of shaming. To better understand the reintegrative shaming theory, we must first know exactly what

However, they are not as stigmatic as they used to be. We no longer put criminal offenders in the stocks, where they could suffer all manner of degradation. Our schools and childrearing practices in families have become much more reintegrative over the past two centuries. Moreover, the evidence is strong that North American families that confront wrongdoing while sustaining relationships of love and respect for their children are the families most likely to raise law-abiding citizens (). Laissez-faire families that fail to confront misbehavior, and stigmatizing families that reject and degrade, both experience a lot of misbehavior (). Overall, reintegrative shaming theory insinuates that shaming is more likely to be powerful where communities are strong and