Community Justice Initiatives: Issues and Challenges

The community justice movement that gained popularity in America during the 1990s is a multiform movement characterized by such programs as victim-offender mediation and reconciliation, conflict resolution, family group conferencing, circle sentencing, restitution, reparative probation, and victim services. The author clarifies goals and values underlying these diverse approaches, identifies inconsistencies and contradictions among them, and suggests points of divergence that may cast doubt on the usefulness of the term community justice."