Immature offenders. A critical history of the representations of the offender in restorative justice

This paper reconstructs and discusses how the ‘offender’ is represented within policy documents, legal statutes and scholarly literature on restorative justice, published and circulated in England and Wales over the last thirty years. The research first outlines the most wide-ranging and recurrent images and implicit assumptions of the offender in restorative justice. A set of specific offender’s features will be singled out, and the ‘ideal offender’ of restorative justice will be profiled. The final step of this work consists of mapping out the cultural context within which this ideal has emerged, in a historical perspective. The overall goal is to shed light on some taken-for-granted images surrounding the offender in restorative justice, and on the cultural context within which they have developed. In this way, it is possible to contribute toward the critical re-assessment of restorative justice whilst considering implications beyond the British context.