Against Prisons: Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

This is the expressive symbolism of restorative justice as a means to repair the harm caused by crime to victims, the community, the offender, and the normative order. Restorative justice takes into consideration all three dimensions of harm, but it does so with a different procedure and emphasis. The procedure is not top-down like in a criminal court, and the basic questions are not "which law has been violated, who is the offender, and what punishment does he deserve?", but rather "what harm has been done, what has to be done about this harm, whose responsibility is it to do something about it, and do we go on from here?". The emphasis is on a collective effort to assess the damage and to repair it as good as one can with a view to the peculiarities of the case and the people involved. Whereas the criminal law dramatizes the violation of the state's norm and authority, restorative justice processes dramatize the harm and the need to make amends and restore peace and confidence. Where the criminal court individualizes, putting all the blame and the court-inflicted pain upon the culprit, restorative justice collectivizes in that it focuses on the situation and its resolution, not on one individual.