Reclaiming a restorative understanding of the victim–offender dichotomy

ABSTRACT

In this paper I examine the skepticism about the victim-offender dichotomy advanced in a number of papers in this special issue. I argue that, from being a relic of the traditional justice system, the category of victim has only recently, and, indeed, in response to critiques from advocates of restorative justice, been recognized within the traditional system. Awareness that the categories of victim and offender are not mutually exclusive should not entail a rejection of the categories. Replacing the categories of victim and offender with categories of those who cause and those who suffer harm misses the crucial distinction between wrongful and faultless harm. If restorative justice erases the wrongfulness of criminal harm it will miss the nature of the harm done to victims and will therefore be unable effectively to repair that harm. Rather than rejecting the victim offender dichotomy, I argue for a set of procedural rights within restorative justice that require communities and the state to pay sensitive attention to the circumstances of injustice and deprivation of offenders as well as the ways in which the law itself is implicated in the victimization of the offender.

KEYWORDS:

• Restorative Justice
• victim and offender
• procedural rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.