Rebuilding Reparation: A Multidimensional Theory of Repair in Restorative Justice

Within conventional criminal justice systems, the dominant response to crime has been punitive, with an emphasis on punishment as a means of accountability. However, extensive scholarship has highlighted the limited effectiveness of retributive approaches in preventing further offending, alongside their tendency to marginalise or overlook the needs and experiences of the person harmed (Zehr, 2015). 1 In contrast, restorative justice (RJ) adopts a fundamentally different orientation by centring crime as a source of harm to individuals, relationships, and communities (Suzuki & Hayes, 2016). It seeks to engage those who have caused harm in processes that provide opportunities to repair the harm experienced by those affected (Rossner & Bruce, 2018). As such, reparation is one of the utmost goals in RJ (Anderson et al., 2025; Kirkwood, 2021), not only as a practical response to harm but also as a pathway toward a broader restorative conception of justice grounded in a relational understanding of social life.