Restorative Justice and Criminal Justice Reform: Forms, Issues and Counter-Strategies

Restorative justice is a growing field of theory and practice. Once a mar- ginal phenomenon, with very limited traction among criminal justice reformers, today it is widely studied, globally practiced and increasingly present in the media and political discourse. A crucial step in the recent development of restorative jus- tice is the proliferation of state policy on this subject. This incipient ‘institutional turn’ entails a significant qualitative transformation of restorative justice, born as a range of crafty instruments emerged organically at the periphery of formal criminal justice systems, and originally designed as alternatives to formal criminal justice practices. This chapter reflects on the re-codification of restorative justice as an instrument of criminal justice reform, focussing on the challenges related to this transformation. The main goal pursued here is to appraise critically the direction taken recently by the restorative justice movement, questioning the taken-for- granted positive effects of enshrining bottom-up justice practices into state policy. The analysis starts from a few preliminary considerations on what restorative justice is. Then, it examines the relationships between restorative justice and criminal jus- tice reform, highlighting some issues related to the use of restorative justice as an instrument to enhance criminal justice systems. The final sections sketch out a pos- sible way forward for the restorative justice movement, towards a radical reimagina- tion of restorative justice.