Empowerment and Retribution in Criminal and Restorative Justice*

Contrary to the implied suggestion in many restorative justice critiques of the status quo, the chief strength of restorative justice interventions does not lie in their rejection of punitiveness and retribution, but the empowerment of communities of care who are the most likely to respond effectively to both the causes and the consequences of criminal wrongdoing. Thus, it is the empowerment of affected stakeholders on both sides that is the crucial feature of restorative justice, and the feature whose absence causes both conventional and restorative justice to fail.