Changing perspectives from a punitive penal system to restorative justice

Abstract

Restorative justice emerged in the western world as an alternative to the existing retributive penal system. Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offence to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obligations in order to heal and put things as right as possible. Throughout the past twenty years restorative justice has distanced itself from the traditional criminal justice system by focusing on repairing the harm caused by an offence rather than charging an offender for committing a crime against the state. The objectives of this study were: (a) to research the principles of the new restorative justice system and how it contrasts from a punitive (traditional) penal system. Specifically, this essay conducts a content analysis to understand what is being done within the criminal justice system in Malta to address this significant issue; (b) to analyse how these principles have been included in the new policy-making process. The overall purpose was to assess the changing perspectives from a punitive penal system to restorative justice in the Maltese scenario. The approach selected for such research was qualitative in nature. Based on the assumption that collecting diverse types of data provides a better understanding of a research issue, the study was namely conducted utilizing semi-structured interviews with key people operating in the criminal field. This essay starts with a short introduction, followed by the literature review where the theoretical perspective is explained. This in turn leads to an explanation of the method and the problems encountered during the research. The data from the research is presented in two stages. The first stage analyses the data together with the findings and the second stage addresses the inter-relationships of the interviews. The concluding chapter brings together the findings from the previous chapters and enables the author to reach conclusions, including recommendations deemed appropriate to address lacunae.