Commandment, commencement and restorative justice

Abstract

Early restorative justice archives challenged state criminalisation through three basic pledges – diversion, social transformation, and decolonisation – thereby inaugurating a movement against repressive state criminalisation and announcing a new paradigm of justice. Returning to that movement's beginning, this article shows how its global successes were secured through intimate ties with state justice that diluted its early pledges. Highlighting oft-overlooked insights from legal pluralism, it calls for new articulations between semi-autonomous justice fields to revitalise, and not simply recover, restorative foundations. Forging links with diverse social fields, and engaging a politics of accusation, restorative justice could recraft lenses that bring harm-producing social assemblies into focus.