The restorative approach associated with criminal intervention

is the restorative justice compatible with an agnostic critique of penalty?

Abstract

The criminal law legitimacy crisis is a context for the emergence of discourses that proclaim the abolition of the penal system or the search for mitigating its effects. Restorative justice comprises different alternatives for conflict resolution, which would imply concluding that it could both constitute an alternative to replace criminal law and be used to mitigate its effects. As restorative justice proposes a paradigm inversion compared to the traditional model of penal intervention, it is questioned whether, when applied as a complementary instrument of criminal law, its foundations are not being distorted. In this context, what were investigated was the extent to which restorative justice can be applied concomitantly with penal intervention without its essence being mischaracterized. After examining the pertinent normative substrate and its theoretical references, it was concluded that the application of restorative justice concomitantly with penal intervention is possible, but it will only be compatible with the premises and values that guide it if it distances itself from the punitive logic that underlies the traditional intervention, which, in turn, along with legislative reforms, demands a cultural change regarding the attitude of the operators responsible for applying the norm.