Restorative_Justice

Restorative Justice I. INTRODUCTION During the past century, the english-speaking legal world has experienced real and considerable change in the areas of criminal law and criminal sentencing procedures. These ever-changing systems of legal processes, rules, and theories are typically reflective of the society’s cultural make-up, beliefs, and level of social advancement. As the common-law evolves and changes we gain deeper understandings of crime, the motivation of crime, and rehabilitation of criminals. Many legal jurisdictions often adopt different definitions on what is deemed a crime and how to treat criminals; nonetheless, there echoes a consistency that the reduction in the level of criminal activity and the reformation of criminals is a desirable goal. New Zealand, like Canada, faces difficult challenges in her criminal justice system. The apparent similarity in the state of criminal law in these countries and the sharing of common problems is not to be unexpected. Both countries have comparable cultures and similar colonial beginnings. One shared unfavorable demographic phenomenon is both ex-British colonies have an unusually high rate of incarceration for her Aboriginal citizens. The issues stemming from this unfortunate problem have been extensively reported and addressed in both countries. It is justice, restorative, victim, criminal, offender, law, sentencing, process, clotworthy, new, sentence, crime, traditional, decision, trial, public, between, western, punishment, one, mr, deterrence, legal, court, approach, community, been, system, general, appeal, aboriginal, zealand, systems, people, common-law