This paper presents some findings concerning peacemaking in restorative justice conferences. In guidelines and handbooks where the terms and conditions of restorative conferences are exemplified, forgiveness and reconciliation are not explicitly mentioned. However, many proponents of restorative justice assume that ‘coming together voluntarily’ will lead to rapprochement and reconciliation. Research findings in many ways contradict this supposed dynamic. Many victims want to teach the young offender a lesson. Others don’t want ‘closure’ or ‘restoration,’ and experience the pressure to come to (...) terms as threatening. These observations make clear that notions as ‘forgiveness,’ ‘repentance,’ and ‘restoration’ are often too ‘big’ and ill-suited to function as core principles for restorative justice. It seems inappropriate to burden the process of coping with past injuries with these concepts. The process of moral learning within restorative justice conferences might better be conceived in terms of opening up and developing understanding. (shrink)

Abstract: Forgiveness of wrongdoing in response to public apology and amends making seems, on the face of it, to leave little room for the continued commemoration of wrongdoing. This rests on a misunderstanding of forgiveness, however, and we can explain why there need be no incompatibility between them. To do this, I emphasize the role of what I call nonangry negative moral emotions in constituting memories of wrongdoing. Memories so constituted can persist after forgiveness and have important moral functions, and (...) commemorations can elicit these emotions to preserve memories of this sort. Moreover, commemorations can be a restorative justice practice that promotes reconciliation, but only on condition that the memories they preserve are constituted by nonangry negative, not retributive, emotions. (shrink)

This paper describes developments in punishment theory since the middle of the twentieth century. After the mid–1960s, what Stanley I. Benn called “preventive theories of punishment”—whether strictly utilitarian or more loosely consequentialist like his—entered a long and steep decline, beginning with the virtual disappearance of reform theory in the 1970s. Crowding out preventive theories were various alternatives generally (but, as I shall argue, misleadingly) categorized as “retributive”. These alternatives include both old theories (such as the education theory) resurrected after many (...) decades in philosophy’s graveyard and some new ones (such as the fairness theory). Only in the last decade or so have new vares o “consequentialism” appeared to dilute a debate among philosophers that had become almost entirely about “retributivism”. I shall describe this trend in more detail. The description will be less an update of my 1990 survey than a rethinking of it. The conclusion I draw from this rethinking is that we need to drop the utilitarian–retributivist (and nonconsequentialist–nonconsequentialist) distinction in favor of one sorting punishment theories according to whether they rely in part on empirical considerations (externalist theories) or instead rely (almost) entirely on conceptual relations (internalist theories). (shrink)