Restorative Rehabilitation

Punishment is not necessarily the answer for young offenders, as crime is a cry for help in many cases, and punishment-focused approaches don’t allow individuals the chance to understand the implications of their actions through a victim's perspective (Choi, Green, and Gilbert 337). Policies and practices for youths need to fulfill more than entrapment and punishment, providing a firm rationale for restorative justice (337). Crimes committed by young individuals are often minor, first-time acts which can be mediated and addressed through the proactive administration of restorative rehabilitation, which often prevents recidivism. Restorative justice is a process where all parties involved in a particular offense collectively resolve the aftermath

Wright elaborates that this terminology is a shift with the meaning of crime, stressing the fact that people are harmed, rather than a crime was broken (Wright 216). The preeminent source of restorative justice is a strong link between the welfare of the victim and the criminal. The victims are offered a central role in the process of restorative rehabilitation, which provides the individual affected by the crime a platform to express emotions and ask questions, as well as decide the reparation needed for the specific criminal (216). This element of restorative justice contributes closure and reasoning towards the negative experience, for all parties involved. This instigates a process of healing towards an often emotionally strenuous experience. Wright also emphasizes how restorative justice focuses on “moralizing social control” rather than punishment, and the psychological processes of shame, apology, and forgiveness as key elements of this process

“VOM brings a victim(s) and an offender(s) together voluntarily in dialog using a mediator(s) to obtain answers, repair harms and make amends to the victim in a safe and controlled setting” (338). The findings concluded that VOM increased the understanding on the impact of young criminals actions and the consequences that followed, through meeting and personalizing the victims (335). Research also indicates that these approaches often lead to high rates of participant satisfaction for all parties, promoting high restitution completion rates and reducing recidivism, while addressing the harm caused by offenses and administrating accountability to offenders (336). One criminal involved in the study claimed that “You have to face the people that you hurt. So you’ll see what your consequences are and you’ll see what happened. Some people might brush that aside and say I can get out of this the easy way, but I didn’t. I felt that I faced what I did and I saw what the consequences were” (345). One victim from this study felt that imprisonment was justified before their VOM experience, but after explained “It was better for them in the long-run to realize and to meet with everybody so they could hear the impact and hopefully it’s changed their lives”