Restorative Justice And The Constuction Of Restorative Justice In China

As the criminal justice reform movement in recent decades in the West, Restorative justice has aroused world-wide attentions. It is a new type of criminal policy initiatives based on concerns of needs arousing from a variety of offenses and the reflections on traditional criminal policies. It advocates resolving the problems through consultation between crime victims and criminals, repairing damages inflicted on victims by crime activities, encouraging perpetrators taking its responsibility and actively returning to the community. Restorative justice has important reference meanings both to our country's criminal justice theory and practice. How to unifying and coordinating restorative justice to the criminal system in our country has become the major Chinese scholars concern. As a new justice model, restorative justice system itself inevitably has some disadvantages, but it should be mentioned its philosophy and its advantages has very positive significance in solving defects of China's current criminal justice. Judicial organs in China have already begun experimenting restorative justice in some area which taking a variety of practice in accordance with the concept of restorative justice. In addition, our country has a "compatibility"customary mediation culture, all these factors both laid a solid foundation for the establishment of restorative justice in China.This article is divided into four chapters, Chapter I Introduction to restorative justice, introduced the concept and characteristics of restorative justice, and the background of the rise of the restorative justice. As a something new, restorative justice does not have a uniform definition, but it differentiates from the traditional justice model by its essential character. As for the causes of its appearance, this article discussed it from the drawbacks of imprisonment, the changes of penalty function as well as the trend of social implementation of punishment.Chapter II introduced the four models of restorative justice which are victim - offender mediation model, family group conference model, sentencing penal model and restorative police warning model. With the hope to provide reference for the restorative justice model in China. Chapter III firstly comparing restorative justice and traditional criminal justice, then analyzing the advantages and weaknesses of restorative justice, pointed out that restorative justice and criminal justice system are complementary in China. Chapter IV analyzes the necessity, feasibility and obstacles of restorative justice application. From the analysis of the criminal justice status quo in our country, suggesting the specific construction of restorative justice model in China, which based on reasonable positioning of restorative justice in our country, and learning s from foreign experience as well as the circumstances in China.