1. There is no agreed upon definition of restorative justice.
a. Within the criminal justice community, there has been no consensus on exactly how restorative justice should be defined. As a result, there is also some confusion within the community on whether or not restorative justice should be viewed as an outcome or a process (Daly, 2015)
b. Because there is no agreement on the definition, there are multiple definitions. This can also result/create theoretical and policy confusion.
2. Restorative Justice deals more so with the penalty than fact-finding phase of the criminal process.
a. Most of the practices in restorative justice, such as community conferences and victim-offender mediation, seem to deal or are concerned with what a justice
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The Re-Integrative Shaming Experiments, or RISE, collected ratings from victims on the sincerity of the apology from offenders. 41% of cases viewed the offenders apologies as “sincere,” 36% of victims viewed the offenders’ apology as “somewhat sincere.” They concluded that the “ideal of reconciliation and repair was achieved in less than half of all cases.” About 27% of victims felt that the main reason for the offender apologizing was because of true remorse (Daly, 2015).
4. Victims’ feeling of recovery is dependent on the degree of distress they experienced from the crime.
a. Victims of lighter crimes were more readily to cooperate in the process versus those of high distress victims. After conferences or mediations, the high distress victims were far more likely to remain angry and fearful of the offenders (Daly, 2015).
b. Victims from graver crimes may not view the restorative justice system as beneficial. While 78% of the low distress crimes seemed to have recovered a year later after the offense, 71% of high distress victims had not recovered (Daly, 2002).
c. Compared to the recovered victims, non/partly recovered victims viewed the offenders more negatively. They were less satisfied with how their case was handled and more likely to wished their case had gone to court. The restorative justice process may not be very beneficial to those victims who had been strongly affected by the crime.
5. RJ practices can increase re-victimization fears in