The meaning of ‘forgiveness’ and its role within restorative justice are highly contested. This book offers analysis from practical and academic perspectives within Christian theology, against a rich canvas of related concepts, including victimhood, sin, love, and vulnerability. Critical friends of restorative justice, the authors argue that forgiveness – whether as journey or act, unilateral or mutual, conditional or unconditional – is necessary to achieving a fully restorative resolution to acts of harm. They also suggest that Christianity, with its meaning-giving metanarrative of restoration, and preference for communitarian approaches to justice, may have epistemic value for evaluating and even deepening the theory and practice of restorative justice.

“Martha Minow is a voice of moral clarity: a lawyer arguing for forgiveness, a scholar arguing for evidence, a person arguing for compassion.” —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths In an age increasingly defined by accusation and resentment, Martha Minow makes an eloquent, deeply-researched argument in favor of strengthening the role of forgiveness in the administration of law. Through three case studies, Minow addresses such foundational issues as: Who has the right to forgive? Who should be forgiven? And under what terms? The result is as lucid as it is compassionate: A compelling study of the mechanisms of justice by one of this country’s foremost legal experts.

"Although Restorative Justice Dialogue is not a long text, it is an impressive achievement. Each chapter is rich in content, as Umbreit and Armour blend theory, practice, empirical research, and case studies to discuss a range of topics from specific models of restorative justice to the role of facilitators in restorative justice dialogue." --PsycCRITIQUES "Restorative Justice Dialogue presents a thorough and comprehensive explanation and assessment of the current state of restorative justice in the world." --Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics "[A]n evidence-based description of the history, practices, and future of restorative dialogue that is informed by the values and principles of law, social work, and spirituality. This is an impressive achievement." --Daniel W. Van NessPrison Fellowship International, Washington, DC "I know of no other book that provides such a complete review of the various and emerging restorative practices and the phenomenal growth of this movement worldwide." --David Karp, PhDSkidmore College "The combination of two outstanding and widely recognized restorative justice researchers, practitioners, and authors has produced a text that is destined to be a major resource." --Katherine Van Wormer, PhDUniversity of Northern Iowa This book provides a comprehensive foundation for understanding restorative justice and its application worldwide to numerous social issues. Backed by reviews of empirical research and case examples, the authors describe the core restorative justice practices, including victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, and peacemaking circles, as well as cultural considerations, emerging variations in a wide variety of settings, and the crucial role of the facilitator. Together, authors Umbreit and Armour bring the latest empirical research and clinical wisdom to those invested in the research and practice of restorative justice. Key topics: Spiritual components of restorative justice Victim-offender mediation Family group conferencing Peacemaking circles Victim-offender dialogue in crimes of severe violence Dimensions of culture in restorative justice Humanistic mediation Application to domestic violence, higher education, and incarceration

A powerful argument for adopting a model of restorative justice as part of the Innocence Movement—so exonerees, crime victims, and their communities can come together to heal In Rectify, a former Innocence Project director and journalist Lara Bazelon puts a face to the growing number of men and women exonerated from crimes that kept them behind bars for years—sometimes decades—and that devastate not only the exonerees but also their families, the crime victims who mistakenly identified them as perpetrators, the jurors who convicted them, and the prosecutors who realized too late that they helped convict an innocent person. Bazelon focuses on Thomas Haynesworth, a teenager arrested for multiple rapes in Virginia, and Janet Burke, a rape victim who mistakenly IDed him. It took over two decades before he was exonerated. Conventional wisdom points to an exoneration as a happy ending to tragic tales of injustice, such as Haynesworth’s. However, even when the physical shackles are left behind, invisible ones can be profoundly more difficult to unlock. In the midst of Bazelon’s frustration over the blatant limitations of courts and advocates, her hope is renewed by the fledgling but growing movement to apply the centuries-old practice of restorative justice to wrongful conviction cases. Using the stories of Thomas Haynesworth, Janet Burke, and other crime victims and exonerees, she demonstrates how the transformative experience of connecting isolated individuals around mutual trauma and a shared purpose of repairing harm unite unlikely allies. Movingly written and vigorously researched, Rectify takes to task the far-reaching failures of our criminal justice system and offers a window into a future where the power it yields can be used in pursuit of healing and unity rather than punishment and blame.

All over the world, the practice of peacebuilding is beset with common dilemmas: peace versus justice, religious versus secular approaches, individual versus structural justice, reconciliation versus retribution, and the harmonization of the sheer number of practices involved in repairing past harms. Progress towards resolving these dilemmas requires reforming institutions and practices but also clear thinking about basic questions: What is justice? And how is it related to the building of peace? The twin concepts of reconciliation and restorative justice, both involving the holistic restoration of right relationship, contain not only a compelling logic of justice but also great promise for resolving peacebuilding's tensions and for constructing and assessing its institutions and practices. This book furthers this potential by developing not only the core content of these concepts but also their implications for accountability, forgiveness, reparations, traditional practices, human rights, and international law.

The theme of Forgiveness and Remembrance is the complex moral psychology of forgiving and remembering in both personal and political contexts. It offers an original account of the moral psychology of interpersonal forgiveness and explores its role in transitional societies. The book also examines the symbolic moral significance of memorialization in these societies and reflects on its relationship to forgiveness.

Demystifying an unrealistic ideal Maria Mayo questions the contemporary idealization of unconditional forgiveness in three areas of contemporary life: so-called Victim-Offender Mediation involving cases of criminal injury, the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa, and the pastoral care of victims of domestic violence. She shows that an emphasis on unilateral and unconditional forgiveness puts disproportionate pressure on the victims of injustice or violence and misconstrues the very biblical passages—especially in Jesus’ teaching and actions—on which advocates of unconditional forgiveness rely.