Restorative Justice: Theories and Practices of Moral Imagination (Criminal Justice: Recent Scholarship)

Criminal and juvenile justice systems in the United States are in crisis. One response to this crisis has been restorative justice, in which victims, offenders, and community members meet to reach an agreement about how to repair the harm caused by crime Levad explores the moral imagination of restorative justice as an alternative framework for understanding and responding to crime, drawing together philosophical virtue ethics inspired by Aristotle s discussion of equity as the highest form of justice a form of justice that requires vivid and expansive moral imagining and an ethnography of restorative justice programs. Levad maintains that because participants in restorative justice practices become adept at vivid and expansive moral imagining, they are better able to realize justice and equity in response to particular cases. She concludes that further institutionalization of restorative justice may help answer some aspects of crises in our criminal and juvenile justice systems.