Restorative Justice and Young People. A Professionals View - Dissertation Example

With the exclusion of any of these assumed notions or procedures, an RJ process may be potentially weakened, and its basic ideas in tension. Often in an RJ, there may be a lack of rectitude or proportionality in the achieved results, however, it must be borne in mind that the processes through which justice is achieved (RJ or otherwise) are often replete with incomplete endeavors. This is primarily owing to the theory that though justice cannot be achieved, one must strive tirelessly to achieve it.

RJ is a process, in which from some perspectives justice cannot be achieved, yet it is worth striving for, to enable a better social output from the criminals. 1 Introduction 1.1 Background study The traditional mode practiced in the criminal justice system is based on retributive justice, which is founded on the “system of institutionalized vengeance”.The prosecutor represents the State and not the victims who are seen as mere witnesses in the case. Thus, we find that the present criminal justice procedures are primarily offender-centric, and focus on guilt, sentencing prison terms (punishment), and protecting the offender’s rights.

Thus, incarceration (or the threat of incarceration) is a major process and achieving justice in the traditional method and appears as a deterrent, though empirical results have shown its failure in proving itself as an effective long-term deterrent effect (ibid). In the traditional justice system, it is assumed that to punish the criminals in a manner (through incarceration) that would disallow them going back into the normal society, which is a rare exception, as most criminals are released and allowed to re-enter the society.

As they re-enter the other members of the society become dependent on them for not causing any further damages within the community. High percentages of reconviction of the released criminals, thus, show that the traditional criminal justice system is lacking in some form (Sherman and Strang, 2007).