Restorative justice and the rights of the accused

ABSTRACT

This paper starts with a basic idea: procedural flexibility is a hallmark of restorative justice. If unregulated, the powers that restorative justice employs could potentially render those accused of wrongdoing at the mercy of its agents’ unfettered discretion. At the same time, insisting on fixed ‘rights of the accused' will likely undermine attempts to salvage a locally responsive justice from today’s conflict management arenas. To address this vexing matter, the author proposes that rights be conceived more broadly as part of historical power struggles, and specifically as attempts to resist conceivable injustices of restorative subjection.

KEYWORDS:

• Rights of the accused
• Foucault and rights
• restorative justice and the accused
• power
• rights and transformative justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ (accessed November 20, 2016).

2 http://ec.europa.eu/justice/criminal/criminal-rights/index_en.htm (accessed December 2, 2016).