Security, with Care: Restorative Justice and Healthy Societies (review)

Elizabeth Elliott spent the last 25 years writing about, teaching, and living restorative justice principles. Over the course of her career, she co-founded the Centre for Restorative Justice at Simon Fraser University, introduced countless students to restorative justice, and worked with both victims and offenders in various volunteer capacities. For this work Elliott was awarded the National Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award in 2010.² Sadly, Elliott passed away shortly after this book was published.

In Security, with Care: Restorative Justice and Healthy Societies, Elliott presents her views on the philosophical and conceptual foundations of restorative justice. She argues that restorative justice must be conceptualized as a new paradigm of justice rather than simply as a new practice or an alternative program. Her underlying concern is that restorative justice risks becoming irrelevant or being co-opted by the traditional system.

The introductory chapters of this book lay the foundation for the development of restorative justice theory by critiquing the concepts that dominate the mainstream justice system: retribution, punishment, and justice. Elliott illustrates the financial and human costs of our current retributive approach by describing the American experiment with mass imprisonment and Nils Christie’s concept of the prison–industrial complex. She analyzes the concept of punishment by drawing from the literature on moral development and parenting. From these sources, Elliott argues, we must recognize the “significance of autonomy, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, reasoning and modeling as efficacious methods of encouraging behavioural changes in and toward peaceable democratic societies” (p. 36). Elliott relies on a variety of theorists and looks at a variety of cultural traditions, which allows her to think about justice broadly and to broaden the reader’s understanding of justice beyond strict ideas of criminal justice and toward some of the features of restorative justice.

The remaining chapters work to support Elliott’s view of restorative justice as an expansive paradigm. In defining her conceptualization Elliott quotes from Howard Zehr, sometimes considered the founding father of the modern restorative justice movement, that restorative justice is “a kind of coherent value system that gives us a vision of the good, how we want to be together.”³ Inherent in this definition is a sense that restorative justice is about relationships and need not be limited in its application to the context of criminal justice.

Indeed, Elliott critiques academics who think and write about restorative justice as applicable only in the criminal-justice realm. Such an approach, she argues, reduces restorative justice to an add-on to the criminal-justice system. At the same time, Elliott acknowledges that restorative justice is most often applied within the realm of criminal justice. She spends some time exploring the problems and successes of that interaction. Though remaining highly sceptical of the compatibility of restorative justice and criminal justice, she acknowledges that there have been some examples of restorative-justice programs operating without compromise in the criminal-justice system.

A key focus of this book is the importance of values and relationships in restorative justice, and Elliot explores diverse sources to develop this point. She draws on peacemaking criminology and Carol Gilligan’s “ethic of care” to identify a number of core values of restorative justice, including honesty, humility, inclusivity, empathy, and forgiveness. Aboriginal ideas about the interconnectedness and interdependence of relationships offer restorative justice an alternative paradigm through which to understand relationships. Elliott also explores the role of two psychological concepts, shame and trauma, arguing that they are key emotions both for those who have harmed and for those who are harmed. She argues that restorative justice can take account of these emotions more fully than the criminal-justice system can.

Security, with Care, concludes by examining the role of the community in restorative justice, looking at the impact that restorative justice can have on building community. Elliott argues that restorative justice should be community based and integrated in various sectors, including health care, education, and social services. “Restorative practices,” she writes, “help to build capacity in...