This book provides a description and overview of restorative justice. Restorative justice is a practice that is focused on healing a community. As the authors highlight, when a crime happens, there are three main participants that are affected, the victim, the offender, and the community in which the harm was felt. To truly restore peace and security, restorative justice focuses on bringing together the offender, the victim and the community in which the harm was felt to determine the appropriate form of restoration.
The authors define three pillars of restorative justice: recognizing and addressing the harms and needs of each stakeholder, fulfilling obligations to right the wrong, and engaging the immediate parties and the community. These guiding pillars of restorative justice allow for varying methods of application, making a singular template impossible to define. Zehr and Gohar provide various examples of restorative justice models to emphasize this point. Above all, in any program, restorative justice emerges from these pillars and from dialogue, support and involvement.