Open AccessRestorative and retributive justice in the context of war and war crimes
Author(s) -
Nils Christie
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
temida
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2406-0941
pISSN - 1450-6637
DOI - 10.2298/tem0504027n
Subject(s) - retributive justice , punishment (psychology) , restorative justice , criminology , context (archaeology) , sociology , economic justice , criminal justice , law , law and economics , political science , psychology , social psychology , history , archaeology
In this paper, the author is dealing with the relationship between restorative and retributive responses to war and war crimes. Starting from labeling theory and critical criminology, the author argues that the crime does not exist and what exist are behaviors which may be terrible, but, which depending on the context may be considered punishable or not. In the basis of punishment is dealing with consequences, not with causes, which makes that retributive approach has considerable limitations. Regarding this, the author argues for restrictive use of punishment and emphasis the need of creating social systems in which ordinary people would be able to come together and jointly discuss the problems they have and the way of solving them. It is important to give an opportunity to victims to tell what have happened to them, what are their pains; but also to the offenders to express what and why they did what they had done. This is the only way of having an impact on the causes, i. e. on repairmen of the disturbed social relations and reconciliation between parties in conflict