Retributive And Restorative Justice

Persuasive Essay:

The Implications of Retributive and Restorative Justice

When the general public is asked about defining a concept of justice, most tend to settle on the idea of fairness. However, what fairness means to one may be inconceivable to another; it is subjective. Within scholarly circles, there are two dichotomies of justice that are discussed: retributive justice and restorative justice. Retributive justice centers on a sense of just desserts, of punishment against the offender to fix the wrong that they have committed. On the other hand, restorative justice emphasizes mediation and understanding between the victim and the offender. This is so that a consensus may be reached in regard to the violated social norms. Restorative justice centers on reparation. The points made here are twofold. First, it is posited that the application of justice is not dichotomous, but a spectrum. Second, it is posited that the ambiguity of the term “justice” is used as leverage for political policy, not as a conceptual framework to achieve fairness. With all the ambiguity surrounding justice as a concept as well as its application, a call to action must be made to the Department of Justice; they should seek to end these debates about the application of justice by openly discussing the concept of justice with supporting documents, thereby informing the public more fully and honestly about how the United States applies the concept of justice.

When discussing retribution and restorative justice, some distinctions need to be made. For purposes of this work, retributive justice is defined as “Imposing punishment to restore moral balance” (Okimoto, Wenzel & Feather, 2009). For most individuals, this is perhaps the most intuitive notion of j...

... middle of paper ...

...nding of what it is they are trying to achieve, as well as offer implications for the future of justice in America.

Although much of the current scholarly information dichotomizes justice into two schools of thought, it should be realized that true justice encompasses both punishment-centered and rehabilitation-centered ideas. Often times, these ideas co-occur to create a more realistic depiction of justice in practice. Furthermore, a more honest approach toward policy should be examined and openly discussed by the Department of Justice. This way, the citizenry who participate in the democracy of the United States can have a better understanding of the issues regarding the type of punitiveness towards offenders. Doing so would encourage a better understanding and more agreeable state of the justice system, one that should be characteristic of the democratic process.