Why Change From the Present Justice System? Benefits and Barriers to Consider

A lot can be learned from those who laid the groundwork in implementing early restorative justice approaches. This section outlines some of the benefits and barriers to implementing restorative justice in your community.

Benefits

In assessing benefits, it is important to determine what good will come from restorative justice principles and practices. The results of a "benefit assessment" can help:

• Developing marketing messages for various constituencies, including community members, offenders and their advocates, victims and service providers, justice practitioners, elected officials, the news media, and allied professionals.
• Comparing existing approaches to justice in the context of a more beneficial approach, i.e. cost effectiveness, victim involvement, offender competency development, community appreciation of justice practices, etc.
• Building programs on perceived strengths.
• Evaluating programs, especially when benefits for these are tangible and can be measured in terms of performance outcomes.

Barriers

In assessing barriers, it is important to identify all possible challenges to the implementation of restorative justice programs and practices. The results of a "barrier assessment" can assist in:

• Early identification of potential opponents' arguments against restorative justice approaches.
• Focusing planning and implementation on reducing or eliminating possible barriers.
• Evaluating program effectiveness based upon success in overcoming any barriers.

It is important to note that no barrier is insurmountable. They should simply be viewed as "challenges" to be addressed up-front, and not avoided through the program planning, implementation and evaluation process.