Restorative justice, scientific research and indigenous wisdom
Restorative justice, scientific research and indigenous wisdom

Summary/Abstract: The special issue of The International Journal of Restorative Justice (2023, 6 (3)) was on the evolving meanings of restorative justice. The discussion was opened by my article ‘Concerns about the meaning of restorative justice. Reflections of a veteran’ (Walgrave 2023) and followed by ten critical comments by prominent scholars worldwide. The concerns address the current stretching out of the concept. Whereas restorative justice was initially designed to indicate a paradigmatic shift in the way justice is done after the occurrence of an offence, the wide extension of its meaning risks making it an elusive idea, loosening social credibility and being very difficult to grasp for systematic research. I plead for a return to an ‘espresso definition’ of restorative justice, short, because it focuses on responding to criminal behaviour, but strong, because it also penetrates the judicial responses to crime.

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