Note: This article's coverage may be more limited than the presentation, but two things are of interest. First, all the safety tips have to do with police activity or victim support after a crime. Second, only 12 people came to the session.
If we think in terms of restorativeness when assessing programmes and practices, we can respond to problems (and even successes) by considering ways in which the intervention might be made more restorative. What might this look like.
If restorative justice is not a programme but rather a philosophy or set of values, then it is not useful to speak in terms of "having it" or "not having it." Instead, we would speak in terms of how restorative our programmes and processes are. How does one measure restorativeness?
Many of us have had the experience of talking about restorative justice with someone who immediately says, "We already have that," and then goes on to describe a restitution or community service programme. It is almost as though people have a checklist of innovations, and they have ticked the box for restorative justice.
The son of murdered Tokoroa school teacher Lois Dear is outraged he cannot tell her killer exactly what he thinks of him... . He admits it contains some strong sentiments about Te Hiko and the judicial system, but he says Te Hiko needs to know he thinks of him.
Both common law and continental law systems base civil liability on the compensatory principal: The victim of a wrongful act should be made whole by the restitution of compensatory damages. However, most common law jurisdictions recognize the mechanism of punitive or exemplary damages, which reward the victim over and above the amount of the actual loss.
One of the significant issues facing RJ City will be how its restorative justice programmes are funded. Today's news illustrates a variety of ways that this is done. Are there lessons to be learned?
Every day violent crimes are committed all across the U.S. The criminal justice system is supposed to protect the victims of these crimes and ensure that the criminal is given swift and just punishment, but there is a loophole in our current law that allows convicted felons to profit financially for the crimes they committed.
In the libertarian society, there are, as we have said, only two parties to a dispute or action at law: the victim, or plaintiff, and the alleged criminal, or defendant. It is the plaintiff that presses charges in the courts against the wrongdoer. In a libertarian world, there would be no crimes against an ill-defined "society," and therefore no such person as a "district attorney" who decides on a charge and then presses those charges against an alleged criminal.
Ken Lay’s death generated a lot of attention for the procedural quirk of abatement, which means that if a defendant dies while his criminal appeal is pending, the conviction must be vacated and the indictment must be dismissed. But the circuits are split about whether abatement applies to criminal orders of restitution.