Restorative justice is concerned with the interrelatedness of the human involvement, and it further offers an alternative framework for resolving different conflict and the resulting harm. It seeks to with the issue of how to make things right. Within the context of criminal justice, the implication of making things right simply means identifying the harm suffered by the intended victim, making the offender accountable for his actions, as well as reestablishing social interactions within the society. It provides the involved parties a chance to repair the harm suffered. Each stakeholder has a story to tell (Jane and Carol 130). This method of justice is recommended because it is less costly as compared to legal justice. To a larger extent restorative justice has a lot more advantages as compared to legal justice. This paper seeks to explain why restorative justice is inapplicable in ironing out family conflict, more so, a family endowed with power imbalance
The first to note is that restorative justice is more applicable and easier to adapt in our current world. It was also preferred to legal justice in the ancient times mainly because of its simplicity. It was considered cheaper, simpler and easy to administrate as compared to legal law. Furthermore restorative justice gives both the plaintiff and defendant ample time to settle their issues by mutual agreement (Heather and John, 22). Fewer procedures are involved, less expenses are incurred and as an extended advantage, there are no extra charges such as costs of hiring lawyers who will in return win or may not win the cases. As a matter of fact, legal justice can be viewed as some sort of competition or supremacy between the two involved lawyers. Some of the parties, either the defendant or the plaintiff goes as far as giving judges loads of money so that they could rule the case in their favor (Heather and John, 24). This on the other side is different with restorative justice because it is not a matter competition but rather a basis of resolving conflict within communities. Restorative justice seeks to engage the moral authority of the community towards serving the best interest of all those affected by crime (Ness and Strong, 45).
There are various advantages of restorative justice as compared to other sorts of justice as earlier highlighted above, our main focus was to explain how restorative justice being one of the best ways to solve some of the problems in our society, it may not be appropriate or applicable when it comes to family conflicts, more so those families with power imbalance (Heather and John, 27). This is so because there may be pried or even fear to sit down as husband and wife to air out issues which some may be very confidential. Some even fear that their colleagues may not be happy or comfortable to go back and live with the same spouses they co- accused. It is imperative to understand the setup of a family and what actually brings conflicts in most families.
In the general setup of most families, it is always believed that men are the head of their families and those women are always to obey their male counterparts. However, some may not be willing to be submissive because one or many of the reasons which is best known to each family. For instance in the earlier days and up to date, there are very nasty sorts of family conflicts and with the dynamics of family set ups which in most cases puts one party or bestow a lot of powers to one party, which brings about the issue of power imbalance (Mclaughin & Open University 130). Domestic violence may take the following forms; sexual abuse, physical assault, denial of conjugal rights among others. Such problems have in the past raised difficult and important questions about the philosophy and implementation of restorative justice.
It should be acknowledged the fact that restorative justice is not fully informed, it is still in the process of exploration and development hence its inefficiency to curb such problems of family conflicts more so in those circumstances where there is gender imbalance. There is a great concern expressed that the conceptual framework of conflict resolution associated with restorative justice is inappropriate for family violence (Heather and John, 33). It is imperative to note that, in the early writing and thinking on restorative justice, it grew out of face to face meetings for nonviolent offences generally in situations where the parties did not know each other. It was a personal or individualistic approach to working through a singular incident, usually involving strangers. Therefore, it is evident that the earlier writings did not put considerations of community and one on one family (Jane and Carol 136).
It should be emphasized the fact that family issues are many of a kind, and there is dynamism in family structures. Many modern families always have both the spouses working and contributing to the general family expenses. It is even worse in situations where the woman earns more salary than the man, she then sees herself very independent, and that she sometimes never need the man that very much (Mclaughin, 36). Such imbalances are very tricky at times because the man of the house truly depends on the wife. Most cases mediation is always used to solve such problems, but the problem arises with the effect of power imbalances which becomes very apparent. Negotiations always reflect power structures between the parties and consequently unequal power will reflect the power imbalances between a husband and wife. Several factors contribute to unequal bargaining power in negotiations, (Jane and Carol 132). These include the disparity in the parties, education and income. Intangible factors such as status, dominance, depression, self-esteem, reward expectation, fear of achievement and sex role ideology have also been identified. In most family set ups, men in most cases are the ones who generally have all these advantages. As such whenever there is any problem within the family, women are expected to lie low because they are perceived as the weaker sex.
Most women will be uncomfortable taking their issues outside the house, and this is why restorative justice to some extent is not fully applicable in cases of family crisis. This is because many individual prefer whatever that happens to their family to remain as secret. They would rather stay with their problems rather than exposing it to the public. Women to some extent are always very considerate when it comes to their families (Heather and John 37). They are the major reason as to why restorative justice fails, majorly because of secrecy and fear of being left and fear of losing their marriages to other individuals (Ness and Strong, 69).
Works Cited
Lang, Peter. Restorative Justice, Peter Lang publisher, 2004. Print
Liebman, Mariam and Open University. Restorative Justice: How it works, Jessicca Kingsley Publisher, 2007. Print
Mclaughin, Eugene. Restorative Justice: Critical issues, Sage Publisher, 2003. Print
Ness, Daniel Van, and Strong, Karen Heetderks. Restorative Justice: An introduction to Restorative Justice, Elsevier, 2010. Print
Heather Strang and John Braithwaite. Restorative Justice and Family Violence, (n.d)
Jane Dickson Gilmore and Carol La Prairie. Will the circle be broken? Aboriginal communities, restorative justice, and the challenges of conflict and change (n.d)
