Reconciling the Concepts of Restorative Justice and Imprisonment

Restorative justice (RJ) in the secure estate is widespread internationally, although piecemeal and inconsistent in its application. It exists in the form of many practices such as mediation, conferencing, circles, and panels. As the interest in RJ continues to grow, this research takes a step back to ask how reconcilable RJ is with incapacitation. Through a combination of normative thinking, literature review, and primary research that applied qualitative methodologies over a 3-year period, the article examines where the two notions meet in their intentions and expected outcomes. A new classification of restorative practices in prisons is proposed, placed in the context of case studies of existing programs from around the world.