Restorative justice and healing the environment

By John Braithwaite

I like the opening essay in the latest issue of Restorative Justice: An International Journal by Elmar Weitekamp and Stephan Parmentier. It argues that if we are to define just one core value of restorative justice, this is healing.

Of course, to be healing, restorative justice needs to be relational, reparative, procedurally fair, nurturant of apology and forgiveness— along with various other things that are important in the restorative values literature.

A neglected virtue of healing as the most distinctive core value of restorative justice is that it nicely accommodates restoration of the environment.

The restorative justice research community has devoted little attention to the way environmental agencies such as the Victorian Environmental Protection Agency have started to use restorative justice conferences in communities afflicted with environmental damage.

Read the entire blog post on War•Crime•Regulation.

Forest Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay under Pixabay Licence.