Stamatakis, N.; (2012) Restorative justice behind bars: exploring the applicability of restorative justice in custodial settings. Masters thesis , UCL (University College London).

Abstract

Restorative justice represents a paradigm in how society responds (or should respond) to criminal behaviour, and it is often proposed as an alternative to the 'retributive' criminal justice system. While some theorists argue that restorative justice and the notions that it represents (i.e. reparation, forgiveness, reconciliation, voluntariness) are incompatible with the notion of imprisonment, others believe it could have a positive impact on the work of prisons and the experience of imprisonment. This latter view is adopted here. Although, restorative justice had found major utility outside prisons, it has not received the same level of consideration inside the institution. While not every prisoner is willing to avail themselves the opportunity to go through a restorative justice process while being imprisoned, or is deemed as 'appropriate' to participate, some could easily fall into the broad purview range of restorative and transformative justice. The present thesis provides examples of restorative justice practices that could be developed within a prison system and are focused on offending behaviour, victim-awareness and victim-offender mediation. Although restorative justice has the potential to have a positive impact on the work of prisons and the overall experience of imprisonment, it is currently limited to a relatively small number of prisons. The reasons behind this limitation are also provided along with suggestions on how we could move towards a 'restorative prison' or how could restorative justice have a realistic future in prison settings

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