Restorative justice has become an increasingly popular topic in the national conversation. No longer just a niche legal concept, restorative justice has gained traction in a variety of contexts. Importantly, restorative justice has emerged as a model that could remedy some of the problems associated with the traditional criminal justice model in the United States: one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, family disruption and loss of civil rights due to brushes with the law, and a culture that is often motivated by fear and bias to put people behind bars.
In a Comment I wrote as a law student, which Stetson Law Review published in 2018, I explored restorative justice and other alternative models that different countries have used to administer justice following mass atrocities, when prosecuting in international tribunals was not feasible. The international legal system could not withstand the high volume of cases that needed to be prosecuted after the Rwandan genocide, Apartheid, and other horrific events, so these countries turned to alternative models to bring justice and build peace in their communities.
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