What do RJ practices involve?

(imagen propiedad de Virginia Domingo)

According with Howard Zehr (2002) RJ practices try to:

• Bring people to the structure
• Help them to have voice
• Integrate them into new relationship

Values of Restorative Justice

(imagen propiedad de Virginia Domingo)

What is the essence of restorative justice?

When a crime is suffered, trauma can arise, and then we need to feel that justice is done, being careful to distinguish the boundary between justice and revenge.

So for me the question is how to do justice to heal the "wounds" ?. Traditional justice fails because in general:

• The needs of the victims are not satisfied, what in many cases implies that victims are revictimized
• The offenders are punished but they dont take responsibility, so the community is frustrated, and they are also out of the process 

Faced with this, Restorative Justice, does not impose, respects flexibility and favors:

• The best attention to the real needs of the victims
• Offenders are helped to take responsability for the damage caused and make the effort to repair or compensate 
• The community takes a direct part in many restorative processes.

Restorative justice encourages the elimination of lifelong roles

Restorative Justice helps  offender to put "face" to the crime, the human being behind the criminal action and thus to see that his/her crime, effectively has caused harm to another person, we can say that helps to humanize his actions, no longer It will about him in front of the state and a rule that has be written in somewhere, something they calle "code". He or she will have to face his or her actions because they caused pain and injury to other people, other members of the community. As Zehr said, the crime is seen with another lens and therefore, the impact it has actually had, is seen more closely, as if we had a magnifying glass. But Restorative Justice also favors the humanization of crime in the eyes of the victim. In many cases victims tend to think about the offender as a demon, a monster that has nothing to do with the people around them.This is undoubtedly a mechanism that can serve them at first, to mitigate the feeling of mistrust that comes after suffering the crime, because the theoretically ideal world in which they lived has collapsed,  after becoming victims and thinking in offenders as monsters relieves this feeling at least a priori, since in this way, the crime will be considered as something totally unusual.

¿Qué implican las prácticas restaurativas? What do RJ practices involve?

Según Howard Zehr (2002) los procesos restaurativos  tratan de:

Incorporar a las personas en el sistema
Darlas voz
Integrarlas en una nueva manera de relacionarse con los demás y consigo mismas

Esta imagen es propiedad de Virginia Domingo de la Fuente.Presidenta de la Sociedad Científica de Justicia Restaurativa

According with Howard Zehr (2002) RJ practices try to:

Bring people to the structure
Help them to have voice
Integrate them into new relationship

Esta imagen es propiedad de Virginia Domingo de la Fuente.Presidenta de la Sociedad Científica de Justicia Restaurativa

Possible structure of restorative justice process

The restorative processes, whether conferencing, circles , or victim-offender meetings have for me, an ideal structure, which is flexible for each case, but ideally would be the one of the picture

Body, moment of the first joint meeting

Heart, it will generate a space of dialogue where people are going to see themselves as human beings, It is time to generate confidence to be able to speak, tell the story and see the needs.

Mind, once the parties have spoken, they will delve into possible solutions to resolve the conflict, address the needs of the damaged, ultimately time to see how to put things right

Spirit, it will be put in common how the person is going to put things right, (action plan), how it is going to be repaired the damage, how people are going to take care of the needs of the affected ones 

Restorative justice encourages the elimination of lifelong roles

Restorative Justice helps  offender to put "face" to the crime, the human being behind the criminal action and thus to see that his/her crime, effectively has caused harm to another person, we can say that helps to humanize his actions, no longer It will about him in front of the state and a rule that has be written in somewhere, something they calle "code". He or she will have to face his or her actions because they caused pain and injury to other people, other members of the community. As Zehr said, the crime is seen with another lens and therefore, the impact it has actually had, is seen more closely, as if we had a magnifying glass. But Restorative Justice also favors the humanization of crime in the eyes of the victim. In many cases victims tend to think about the offender as a demon, a monster that has nothing to do with the people around them.This is undoubtedly a mechanism that can serve them at first, to mitigate the feeling of mistrust that comes after suffering the crime, because the theoretically ideal world in which they lived has collapsed,  after becoming victims and thinking in offenders as monsters relieves this feeling at least a priori, since in this way, the crime will be considered as something totally unusual.