As we enter the heart of restorative justice, normally well-grounded and sober practitioners are sometimes so moved by its potential that they start using mystical, even religious, language to describe the process. A colleague recently said: “It's truly amazing, magical.” Restorative meetings are always interesting but it is not uncommon for those who have attended a particularly powerful restorative meeting to say that it stands out as the high point in their long career as a social worker, police officer, prison chaplain or probation officer. The parties involved can also sound evangelical, wishing to share their stories and encourage others to give restorative justice a try, as a glance at the stories on the Why Me? and Restorative Justice Council websites will show. This chapter considers some of the features of restorative justice, and may explain why it can bring out the mystic in the most sceptical among us.

Shame, guilt and empathy

Drawing on studies from Japanese culture, the Australian criminologist John Braithwaite introduced the influential theory of ‘reintegrative shaming’, which involves the evocation of shameful feelings in the person responsible during a restorative meeting. He asserted that shame can be utilised in both a good and bad manner. Criminal justice focuses on negative, or ‘stigmatic’, shaming, with punishment labelling individuals as immoral agents. Braithwaite called this ‘disintegrative shaming’, which he said is counterproductive because ‘offenders’ take on these negative labels and react negatively by reoffending, which ‘divides the community by creating a class of outcasts’.

Braithwaite argued that ‘shaming’ can have a positive impact if it is used in the right way, and that the restorative process is itself a ‘positive’ form of shaming. If family members and other supporters are invited into a restorative meeting, the restorative process provides additional shaming through their shows of disapproval and regret, because the shame which ‘matters most’ in Braithwaite's view is the shame arising from the disapproval of the people we care about – not the police or the judges.

Braithwaite stressed that shame should only be evoked in a way that condemns the offending behaviour without degrading or stigmatising the perpetrator. He said that shame can then be constructive because the person responsible is not labelled as bad, and having experienced shame, the focus can turn to how he or she can make amends and be ‘reintegrated’ as a member of the law-abiding community.