Teaching Retributive and Restorative Justice in the Classroom

In civics and ethics courses, education about the different aspects of justice and its applications in the modern world is crucial.

Since 2017, we have seen the emergence and uptick of various social movements that have made these three years very active in pursuing equity and social justice. Activism such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have spearheaded the trend of criticism and re-evaluation of social structures that generate sexist, racial, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic violence.

However, this epistemological awakening has come with a price, causing us to reflect on the validity of these movements’ methods and proceedings. While their need is indisputable, there is a reason why social justice movements are being questioned.

The reason for this challenge is not a denial that the equity it would bring is urgently needed. But it does sustain that the idea of justice that we have, even before delving into its social dimension, is a concept that we understand very superficially.

If it were not so, we would know that we are using retribution justice as the basis for today’s most critical social movements. This particular type of justice is not sufficient to achieve the objectives pursued by activist groups. For this, there must be a greater dominion of restorative justice. But what does this mean? Is there more than one kind of justice? Why do we need both?

These would be helpful questions if they were taught in schools and universities, whether you are a teacher of ethics, civics, or social sciences. If you are looking for resources to provide your students with a better understanding of how activism and justice work and how this latest wave of social movements has turned out, you will find the concepts of retribution and restorative justice to be useful.

Retribution Justice: A system of historical relevance

Retribution justice is a direct response to criminal conduct that focuses on punishing the offenders and compensating the victims. In theory, most cases consider the severity of punishment in proportion to the seriousness of the crime. This is the type of justice with which we are most familiar and on which the bulk of criminal codes is based since their historical beginnings.

While one can find instances of restorative justice in both ancient and modern criminal codes, the foundations we have to understand justice today, documents such as the Hammurabi Code or The Law of the 12 Tables, were structured according to a disciplinary perspective of justice.

The philosophical principle on which these criminal codes were written designated a crime as a violation of another person’s rights. In this context, victims would have to be compensated for the harm suffered, intentional or not, and offenders would have to be punished due to their wrongdoing.

These early instances of justice imparted by the state, and their consequent evolution, were influential in settling generational disputes among families or clans as the most accepted form of administering justice. Because of this, different civilizations could establish codes based mostly on retributive justice under the guardianship of a judiciary. This helped develop a system of laws based on social order intention and not on a desire for revenge. Without this change in the ancient world, it would have been impossible to conceive or pursue the idea of social equity that we have today.

However, the principles and evolution of retribution justice derive from the needs of a world that wanted “eye for an eye” justice. For this reason, the social environment that marks the 21st Century begins to present limitations that translate into obstacles and even stumbles in the efforts of today’s social movements. For a context as complex as the one here and now, retribution justice fails to address all the ramifications needed to fulfill the agenda of today’s social movements.

If what is sought through activism in 2020 are mechanisms for accountability, lessons to learn, dialogue, understanding, collaborative work, and overcoming systemic problems without invalidating or dehumanizing the affected or the offenders, a theoretical framework only considers crime, punishment, and compensation fall short.

Without a doubt, the work put forward by today’s activists is exceptionally challenging. However, to complete their toolkit, it is necessary to bring to the center another approach to justice that is not limited to considering only crime and punishment.

Restorative Justice: A New Approach to Social Balance

Justice based on punishment for offenders and compensation for victims is suitable for establishing social order. However, it is useless if what is sought is progress toward a more balanced, empathetic, and self-aware society. Restorative justice, also known as compassionate justice, consists of elements that expand the retribution justice scope. This kind of justice consists of a system where parties involved or interested in a particular crime or wrong action decide how to deal with its immediate consequences and repercussions for the future.

Restorative justice sees a crime as more than breaking the law, assesses the damage of this action in the people involved, interpersonal relationships among offenders and those affected, and the community’s impact. The restorative process is understood as a means of managing conflict resolution. Beyond punishing and compensating, it focuses on understanding, reconciling, and solving. Dialogue is its foundation, and its main objective is to restore social peace fractured by a conflict or criminal act.

Gordon Bazemore, chair professor and director of the Institute of Community Justice for Florida Atlantic University, and Lode Walgrave, chair professor at the International Network for Research on Restorative Justice for Juveniles, point out the ideal result of restorative justice: obtain justice through the restoration or reparation of the damage caused by the crime.

Restorative justice allows those involved to agree on how to act afterward, considering all parties’ impacts and needs, both offenders and the affected. This is the most challenging part to comprehend, how this type of justice works, and why it might be useful to resolve modern conflicts. We are historically conditioned to think of crime as the violation of another person’s rights, and, consequently, the rights of the person who commits the offense should be reduced or nullified in some capacity to restore a balance.

This does not allow us to see the root of wrong actions or crimes, and while it serves as a measure of control, it does not help us prevent a particular crime or wrongdoing from being repeated. Punishment and correction are not the same as learning. 

In some cases, the trigger for crimes like theft can be systematic poverty. The reason for crimes such as destruction of public property or non-peaceful demonstrations can be fed-up exasperation with a public security system and social symptoms so pronounced that they make it impossible for the state to dignify and violence-free life for all its citizens.

These acts bring with them social disorder. Yes, they can be classified as crimes, but by applying a retributive approach, are we resolving the problem that caused the crime in the first place? Are we avoiding recidivism? Are we learning anything?

On the other hand, there is merit and usefulness in removing from positions of power the people who have caused systematic harm, who have contributed consciously and voluntarily to create structures that promote violence. Ideally, this is what activist groups in movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter intend to do. However, their objectives cannot be achieved only with retribution justice that has been in use for millennia and does not fully fathom the depths of current social needs.

Suppose there are no discussions of both retribution and restoration at the center of the conversation about justice. In that case, we risk not being effective in holding offenders accountable and achieving the learning that prevents the violations intended to be eradicated in the first place.

The need for new approaches to justice that include a proportionate and practical use of both types is crucial to avoid the stagnation and discrediting of social movements. Without this, they cannot ensure the continuity of just and equitable progress towards the society that they seek to achieve through activism.

In civics and ethics classes, have you learned or taught about various types of justice? Do you think knowing these concepts is necessary to understand better how to advance toward a better society? Tell us in the comments.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Sofía García-Bullé

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0