The Political Lives of Restorative Justice

Presentation of a research project as part of the "Jeudis de la Maison Suger", a residents' research seminar.

This session will welcome Giuseppe Maglione for a presentation on the political issues surrounding restorative justice. He will discuss its evolution and its various rationales, proposing a new vision based on interdependence, non-violence and radical democratic practice.

Presentation of the project

"Restorative justice is widely promoted as a humane response to crime, bringing together victims, offenders and community members to reflect on what has happened and how to repair the harm caused. Often presented as an alternative to punishment, it shifts the focus from legal abstraction to lived experience, from retribution to reparation.

Complexifying this criminological framework, this seminar traces the political emergence of restorative justice, from its countercultural roots to its adoption by state institutions, exploring four political rationales that have shaped its trajectory: anti-statist, democratic procedural, liberal-communitarian, and populist victim-centred. Drawing on political theory and critical criminology, it questions how restorative justice challenges, but also reproduces, dominant logics of governance, such as state sovereignty and the contemporary political-moral centrality of "ideal victims". The seminar concludes with an outline of a post-foundational and anarchic vision of restorative justice: a vision based on interdependence, oriented towards non-violence and committed to justice as a radical democratic practice."

Speaker

Giuseppe Maglione is Lecturer in Criminology and Director of the Restorative Justice Clinic at the University of Kent (UK). His research on restorative justice has been published in Critical Criminology, European Journal of Criminology, Criminology & Criminal Justice and Social & Legal Studies, among others. His monograph Restorative Justice and Contemporary Political Theory: Critical Encounters and the edited volume Restorative Justice at a Crossroads: Dilemmas of Institutionalisation (with Ian Marder and Brunilda Pali) were both published by Routledge in 2024. He has held visiting research positions at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oslo, KU Leuven, and the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg. From 2020 to 2022, he served on the Research Committee of the European Forum for Restorative Justice.