Restorative Justice
Managing Conflict Beyond Punishment
by Martina Cangialosi
Is it possible to rethink justice beyond the logic of punishment? How can the penal system be transformed to focus on the victim and prevent further violence?
There is a model of justice that involves the victim, the offender, and the community in the search for a solution that promotes repair, reconciliation, and a sense of collective safety: it is called restorative justice. This definition, offered by criminologist Howard Zehr (Changing Lenses, Herald Press 2015), one of the founding fathers of restorative justice, represents an attempt to frame a complex and constantly evolving phenomenon that includes a set of methods and practices aimed at managing and resolving conflicts.
The underlying idea is that the crime is not only a violation of a legal norm, but above all a rupture in a relationship. The victims and their needs are placed at the center, with the aim of addressing the conflict and dealing with the emotional consequences (anger, fear, anxiety, resentment, shame, etc.) that are disregarded by the criminal justice process.
Through dialogue and meetings, the goal is to create protected and safe spaces where victim and offender can share their experiences and begin a process of exchange aimed, on the one hand, at acknowledging the victim and their dignity, and on the other, at fostering the offender’s sense of responsibility, who, in this context, finds a space to be heard free from punitive logic.
Unlike traditional justice, which requires state intervention to determine guilt and impose a punishment, relegating the victim to the background, restorative justice practices involve both parties, recognizing their responsibilities and needs, and promoting paths of reparation for the damage caused through mutual care.
Retribution - the idea that the offender should be “punished as they deserve” - and deterrence are set aside in order to focus on rebuilding the relationship that has been broken by the crime.
A fundamental feature of these practices is the voluntary and consensual participation of both victim and offender. “Restorative justice is a radical proposal because it means taking action and participating in a realm traditionally dominated by passivity, actively engaging where one would normally passively endure harm,” explains Claudia Mazzucato, penal mediator and professor of Criminal Law at the Catholic University of Milan.
The idea of restorative justice, which views crime as a rupture in relationships and involves the participants in the conflict in its repair, traces back to indigenous models of dispute resolution. Some of these practices originated among indigenous peoples of North America, Africa, and New Zealand, where the focus was not on the individual, as in classical criminal justice, but on the community and the harmony among its members, essential for the community’s survival. Crime breaks the interconnection between humans, animals, and the environment, affecting everyone involved and therefore requiring a shared form of repair.
During colonization, Western legal systems condemned and repressed these traditional forms of justice, which have nevertheless managed to survive to this day. When restorative justice took shape in the 1970s in Canada and the United States and the term ‘restorative justice’ was coined, the traditions of Canada's indigenous peoples were drawn upon to create the first peace circles, i.e. dialogical procedures that bring together the various actors in a conflict. Participation could also be extended to others, such as police officers or community representatives, all gathered in a circle, a configuration meant to facilitate dialogue and break down hierarchies. In New Zealand, beginning in the mid-1980s, family group conferences were introduced in the juvenile justice system. These meetings involve the families of victims and offenders, allowing emotional expression and the development of a plan for the young offender that includes compensation as well as prevention and, at times, punishment. Originated within Maori communities, these conferences are used in response to most juvenile crimes, replacing court intervention.
In Italy, the most common form of restorative justice is mediation, a dialogue between the victim and the offender based on sharing emotions and understanding each other’s experiences and dignity.
Mediation provides the victim with the chance to be heard and the offender with an opportunity to gain awareness of their actions and their consequences. It is called mediation because it involves the presence of a third party, the mediator, who guides and supports the exchange. It can also occur between victims and offenders of similar crimes when direct mediation is not possible or appropriate.
Restorative justice in Italy was formally regulated by the 2022 Cartabia Reform. The law allows the use of restorative justice at any stage of criminal proceedings through mediation programs or restorative dialogues - forms of expanded mediation involving families and communities. The list of practices recognized by the law is not exhaustive, leaving room for other approaches that consider the interests of the victims and the communities.
Experiences of restorative justice in Italy occurred even before the reform. In 2007, for example, a long process began that lasted seven years, involving victims, family members, and those who acted violently in the armed struggle between the 1970s and early 1980s. Alternating between offender-victim mediation meetings and moments of discussion and exchange in larger groups, a dialogue was established between the participants that allowed for a shared reinterpretation of the ‘Years of Lead’.
Despite this, the use of restorative practices remains limited, as well as being unevenly distributed across the country. One of the reasons for this is the lack of suitable infrastructure for holding meetings. But there are also cultural obstacles:
“In terms of public opinion, these practices are still seen as extremely idealistic, forgiveness-oriented, or instrumental, as if they automatically led to a reduction or discount in the offender's sentence,”
Federica Brunelli, criminal mediator and expert in restorative justice programs, explains to Voice Over Foundation. “It is not a deprivation of victims' rights, quite the contrary. It seeks to satisfy the need for justice that may remain even after the end of the trial, and often the benefits are considerable. Ninety-nine percent of people who participate in these programs say they are satisfied.”
Restorative justice challenges punitive and retributive logics deeply rooted in our society not only in prisons, but also in schools, hospitals, workplaces, and many spheres of civic life. In Discipline and Punish, French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault wrote that punitive institutions embody one of the paradigms of discipline, the general framework of control applied to citizens in all social spheres since the 18th century. Prisons, in fact, were born alongside capitalist society, which required a disciplined labor force for industrial production. Through control and punishment, detainees were accustomed to obedience and conformity.
Restorative justice, by contrast, questions the idea that harm should be answered with more harm; it seeks to look beyond punishment and ask what lies behind a crime and, above all, how to repair a broken relationship.
The community to which the actors belong plays a central role and can become an essential part of the reconciliation process. In some cases, restorative practices have been used to address conflicts affecting entire communities, as with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in South Africa in 1995 after apartheid. Through testimonies and storytelling, the Commission investigated human rights violations and sought to create a shared narrative while recommending forms of rehabilitation and reparation.
In Italy, a significant example comes from Sardinia, where the construction of the maximum-security prison of Nuchis, in Tempio Pausania, in the province of Sassari, generated significant social tension. On the one hand, prisoners transferred from other regions found themselves far from their families and in a state of greater isolation, fueling discontent. On the other hand, many inhabitants of Tempio expressed fears about possible mafia infiltration into the city.
Restorative conferences were therefore organized, involving detainees, citizens, prison officers, the prison director, and educators. Patrizia Patrizi, professor of Legal Psychology and Restorative Justice at the University of Sassari, who participated from the outset, explains to Voice Over Foundation the importance of the circular arrangement: “The circle allows people who usually have different roles and functions to get to know one another and to begin repairing the fracture within the community.”
Despite difficulties and changes in the prison’s leadership, the meetings continued and later included university students. Reflections shared by detainees regarding their sense of responsibility toward their children revealed the need to involve schools, drawing on the preventive function of restorative justice. “Human dignity, solidarity, responsibility, the search for truth through dialogue, that is the idea that by speaking with others we can see truths that would otherwise remain hidden: these are the values of restorative justice that we tried to share with students,” explains Patrizi.
Tempio Pausania is the first “restorative city” in Italy, inspired by international experiences, particularly that of Hull in England. There, since 2004, restorative practices have been introduced in schools, municipal administration, and nonprofits in response to rising crime linked to economic crisis and declining public services, which also affected education. The project grew, and by 2010 around 3,000 people had completed training in restorative justice. Hull’s example shows that “applying restorative justice in contexts marked by high levels of interpersonal and social conflict, which in turn derive from situations of poverty, hardship, and deprivation, is possible and has led to significant results in terms of reducing conflict,” write Grazia Mannozzi and Giovanni Lodigiani in Restorative Justice: Rebuilding Relationships, Rebuilding People.
These examples allow us to imagine a different way of building relationships between people, orienting them towards collective responsibility and participation: “restorative justice is, in fact, primarily self-care through caring for others,” the authors write in Restorative Justice. It is the search for a different way of doing justice, oriented towards social cohesion, respect for the dignity of the victim, their participation in conflict resolution, and the reintegration of offenders into society. As Claudia Mazzucato, professor of criminal law at the Catholic University of Milan, explains, it is necessary to move from a justice represented by the scales and the sword to divide and separate, to the image of a tree, a symbol of justice that serves not to punish but to protect, promote coexistence, and actively participate together in rebuilding.
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