Restorative justice: Its potential

For the sake of argument let us assume an imperfect criminal justice system, creaking under the strain of volume of work, level of crime and limited resources. The term Restorative Justice is rapidly gaining currency in many sectors of our community at present. Simultaneously as interest grows, we wonder whether it is a notion, a concept, a philosophy or a different way of restoring our criminal system. It has been described as all of these: in essence it is all of these and more. It can offer our society a different paradigm of crime and society's response to it, and has even been suggested as a replacement for our existing system, (Zehr and Umbreit, 1982).