Review of Xiaoyu Yuan,Restorative Justice in China: Comparing Theory and Practice

Asian Journal of Criminology -     

恢复性司法践行理路探析——以欧洲的实践为视角

恢复性司法是一种对犯罪做出的系统和积极的反应,较之传统刑事司法具有社区性、无害性、多层面等特点。20世纪末,在传统刑事司法遭受困境、刑事政策面临变革以及人权保护的背景下,恢复性司法得到空前的复兴和重视。欧洲等国的恢复性司法的立法和实践为我国提供了灵感和经验。面对世界刑法这一全新的发展潮流我国应审慎对待并完善相关制度,逐步有序地将恢复性司法贯行到刑事司法改革之中。     

平和司法：恢复性司法的本土化——关于平和司法理念与实践的调研报告

平和司法是在学习国外恢复性司法理念、实证分析烟台市检察机关的办案实践、考察外地检察机关的先进经验的基础上提出的全新命题,是恢复性司法本土化的一个尝试。平和司法可分为司法心态(基础要素)、司法模式(手段要素)、司法境界(目的要素)三个层面,与恢复性司法最大的不同就在于它的层次性和层次之间的互动性。平和司法在执法理念上与传统的司法理念有很大的转变,与宽严相济的刑事政策相适应,符合社会主义法治理念的本质要求。实践平和司法将对维护社会和谐稳定、预防犯罪、节约司法资源、维护被害人和犯罪人合法权益具有积极意义。     

恢复性司法理论及其引入与借鉴

作为一种新的刑事司法模式,恢复性司法目前已经在很多国家都有立法和司法实践,并且已经受到了以联合国为代表的国际社会的普遍关注。虽然我国的刑事和解与西方的恢复性司法在基本原则、价值追求方面有相似之处,但并非完全等同,我国虽不宜全盘引入恢复性司法理论,但可以借鉴其合理成分以完善我国现有的刑事和解制度。     

恢复性司法程序之思考

本文对恢复性司法程序的内容、制度基础以及历史渊源进行考察,并对恢复性司法程序的利弊加以分析,最后论述在我国构建恢复性司法程序的障碍及有利因素的基础上,提出了构建该程序的初步设想。     

论恢复性司法

恢复性司法是古代司法模式的更高层次的回归,目前在数十个国家都有立法或实践,并巳受到国际社会关注.恢复性司法蕴含着被害人、被告人、社区利益平衡理念与恢复关系的司法理念.并且创生了一种新的利益争端解决方式,形成对传统司法之有益补充.由于其有利于完善我国刑事司法体系,解决实际问题,因而有引进的必要.并且我国也具备借鉴恢复性司法之观念和相关制度基础,因而有引进的可行性.     

论修复性司法

与传统刑事司法相比,修复性司法在满足各方当事人需要、吸引社会公众参与、预防和减少犯罪、降低成本、提高成效等方面具有优势,但也有过度依赖当事人、适合处理的案件有限、社会控制的不当扩大和对弱势群体及当事人权利保护不力等局限。修复性司法在国家在刑事司法中的地位、刑事司法的功能、对正义的理解和犯罪解决机制多元化等方面对我们有重要启示。改革我国刑事司法,应跨越单纯改革刑事诉讼程序的狭隘思路,对刑事司法机制进行重塑,逐步建立统一协调、良性互动、功能互补、程序衔接、彼此支持的双轨制,以更好地解决犯罪问题。     

Revisiting Informal Justice: Restorative Justice and Democratic Professionalism

Restorative justice is a form of informal justice growing rapidly among criminal justice practitioners. It decenters the focus of criminal justice from the offender breaking a law of the state to the harm caused the victim and community. Resolution is said to come from offenders taking responsibility and making amends for the harm done and from communities supporting the victim and providing offenders with opportunities and skills to reintegrate as contributing members.
Restorative justice theory largely ignores the role of professionals in the criminal justice process, and yet professionals have played a dominant part in initiating many restorative justice programs. Several theoretical traditions recognize professionals as being important intermediaries between citizens and the state. The theory of democratic professionalism argues that professionals can play crucial roles in increasing and improving democratic participation in public affairs. This article examines two functioning restorative justice programs to flesh out what democratic professionalism might look like in operation—what tasks professionals perform and what citizen involvement means to the professionals. We argue that restorative justice cannot get along without professionals and that democratic professionalism may help restorative justice to avoid some of the problems associated with other approaches to informal justice by increasing true community participation but balancing it with concern for individuals' rights.     

Retributive and Restorative Justice

The emergence of restorative justice as an alternative model to Western, court-based criminal justice may have important implications for the psychology of justice. It is proposed that two different notions of justice affect responses to rule-breaking: restorative and retributive justice. Retributive justice essentially refers to the repair of justice through unilateral imposition of punishment, whereas restorative justice means the repair of justice through reaffirming a shared value-consensus in a bilateral process. Among the symbolic implications of transgressions, concerns about status and power are primarily related to retributive justice and concerns about shared values are primarily related to restorative justice. At the core of these processes, however, lies the parties’ construal of their identity relation, specifically whether or not respondents perceive to share an identity with the offender. The specific case of intergroup transgressions is discussed, as are implications for future research on restoring a sense of justice after rule-breaking.     

The Evolution of Balanced and Restorative Justice

Maloney, Armstrong, and Romig presented a portrait of “Joey,” who was the exemplar of what was wrong with the juvenile justice system, in 1988 when they published The Balanced Approach in this Journal. In response, they reimagined a juvenile justice system predicated on balancing three fundamental goals—protection of community, accountability to victims, and development of competencies to prepare juvenile court‐involved youth for productive roles in their communities. The authors examine the evolution of balanced and restorative justice and re‐imagine how Joey's life may have been different at critical junctures of his juvenile court involvement.     

论修复性司法模式

与重惩罚的传统刑事司法模式不同,修复性司法模式,强调的是如何对犯罪造成的损害进行修复,而非单纯惩罚犯罪人。修复性司法作为一种刑事司法改革运动与一种刑事司法理念,还不是一个完全成熟的理论。因此,其内涵关系真实性是否存在还需要进一步检验,同样,修复性司法在我国能否进入实务过程似乎还有一段困难的路要走,仍有待加强实证研究。     

西方恢复性司法理论渊源之考究

恢复性司法的勃兴固然与该司法模式所显现的社会效果不无关系,但我们也不能忽视其背后所隐藏的深厚、坚固且充满朝气的理论渊源,即"后现代主义"、"平衡正义"和"现代伦理"。探究其理论渊源有利于人们更好地认识恢复性司法。     

Restorative Justice: The Challenge of Sexual and Racial Violence

The paper reviews the theory and policy proposals of recent formulations of abolitionism and restorative justice. Challenges are posed to some of the assumptions of abolitionism by considering its applicability to acts of violence against women, children, and minority ethnic citizens. In particular, the assumptions that dangerous offenders are few, and that the 'meaning' of a harmful act is negotiable between perpetrators and victims, are called into question. The symbolic function of criminalization and penalization is discussed. The paper considers whether the strategies suggested by recent proponents of forms of abolitionism and restorative justice can satisfy doubts about the adequacy of earlier abolitionist formulations in relation to both the symbolic and instrumental functions presently served by criminal law.Whilst calls for further criminalization and penalization of racial, sexual, and domestic violence are understandable, the abolitionist case that retributive justice is more likely to increase rather than reduce such violence, and to leave victims unsatisfied, is defended.     

Female Delinquents and Restorative Justice

As imprisonment rates increase in America, women are being adversely affected. Although women are still a minority in terms of the total number of persons incarcerated, their numbers are rising faster than those of men. This article looks at this disheartening trend and makes the case the restorative justice can be used as gender-specific programming for female delinquents.     

Punitive Restoration and Restorative Justice

Criminal justice policy faces the twin challenges of improving our crime reduction efforts while increasing public confidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that at least some measures popular with the public are counterproductive to greater crime reduction. How to achieve greater crime reduction without sacrificing public confidence? While restorative justice approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional sentencing with the potential to achieve these goals, they suffer from several serious obstacles, not least their relatively limited applicability, flexibility, and public support. Punitive restoration is a new and distinctive idea about restorative justice modeled on an important principle of stakeholding, which states that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say about them. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed or threatened by criminal offences. Punitive restoration is punitive insofar as the available options for this agreement are more punitive than found in most restorative justice approaches, such as the option of some form of hard treatment. Punitive restoration sheds new light on how we may meet the twin challenges of improving our efforts to reduce reoffending without sacrificing public confidence, demonstrating how restorative practices can be embedded deeper within the criminal justice system.     

Juvenile Justice in Oregon: Balanced and Restorative Justice in Action

The goals of Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) are to hold juvenile offenders meaningfully accountable, hear and empower crime victims and engage communities both as stakeholders who have been negatively impacted and as advocates to make things right for the crime victim, offender, and community. This article examines how several Oregon juvenile justice agencies have put BARJ into action over the last 25 years, highlighting specific examples of how several agencies have made this the philosophical underpinning of their work. An overview of the philosophical principles, values, and goals that drive this approach is also discussed.     

Assessing Criminal Justice Practice Using Social Justice Theory

In this article, I introduce two of the leading theories of social justice put forth by John Rawls and David Miller. Then, I assess criminal justice practice, from law-making to corrections, in terms of ways in which it is consistent and inconsistent with these theories of social justice. Throughout the article, I also identify ways in which criminal justice practice is inconsistent with social justice. Finally, I make recommendations for reforming criminal justice to make it more consistent with social justice.     

Ambivalent Sovereigns and Restorative Justice: Exploring Conditions of Possibility and Impossibility for Restorative Justice in a Post-communicative Age

This contribution hopes to be able to contribute to answering the question: whither restorative justice? The restorative justice (RJ) movement has arrived at an existential crossroads. In this contribution an attempt is made to analyse how some of the origins of the RJ movement could be located in the emergence and crystallization of a new form of life (“control society”) in the wake of the Second World War. At the heart of this form of life one might be able to discern, on the one hand, a desire for and will to radical sovereignty, and, on the other, a resulting awareness of ambivalence. Whilst these aspects of post-war life have formed the backdrop of developments in RJ, and have therefore formed part of its conditions of possibility, one might now wonder if, in a post-communicative age such as ours, those very aspects have now become part of its conditions of impossibility. The argument explored in this contribution however holds that elements in the aforementioned form of life also hold potential for the re-thinking of restorative justice theory and practice.