Race, Crime and Restorative Justice

While scholars restorative justice have acknowledged problems such as over-representation and bias in their research, there has been little adequate theory on how restorative practices either contributes to, or mitigates one of the most defining problems for criminal justice, namely the growing evidence that justice remains structured along lines of race, ethnicity and indigeneity. This book addresses the intersection of restorative justice and race, ethnicity, and indigeneity as they pertain to criminal justice within Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States.

This book critically evaluates the lack of attention to questions of race, ethnicity and indigeneity within restorative justice literature on policy and practice, and presents empirical research on the question of who gets access to restorative justice. Its develops a critical analysis of the intersections between restorative justice and race, ethnicity and indigeneity within the movement’s practices and theories, as well as an assessment of ways that restorative justice has ignored the problems related to the ＂colour line＂ of justice.

William R Wood is a Lecturer, at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Australia. Juan Tauri is a doctoral student at the University of Wollongong, Australia.