My two-cents:

It seems to me that whether restorative justices is truly restorative or even transformative, rests with the mindsets of the participants, how they assume responsibility for their roles, and how they take the process and its outcome to heart.

If any single participant cannot fully commit to getting past alienation, indifference, and lingering tendency toward recrimination, restorative practices cannot be restorative, much less transformative. It’s critical for all to accept their responsibility in order to make RJ work as it’s intended.

Otherwise, sadly, society has no choice, but to rely on the retributive model, which can be transformative in its own right, and often not as intended.

With regard to the exercise, perhaps the groups assigned to the retributive approach would take longer if theywere presented with a more complex set of questions reflecting a richer version of retributive thinking. I think this would also make the exercise more balanced and help bring out more clearly what is distinctive and valuable about the restorative/transformative approaches. What i have in mind is somethng like the following:

What wrongdoing has been committed and who is responsible for it?
With regard to any particular wrongdoer, how culpable where they?
What degree of ‘hard treatment’ does the wrongdoer deserve to undergo for what they have done?
Who, if anyone, has the right to impose such ‘hard treatment’? Who, if anyone, is obliged to impose it?
How can we justify the imposition of hard treatment on the wrongdoer?

I’m wondering if you might share an illustration of a case you might use to illustrate the distinctions among the three approaches. As I’m running through possibilities in my experience, I realize that you (and Dave) have likely arrived at a rich case study through trial-and-error.

With warmest regards from Atlanta, –Tim

I find both the restortative and transformative questions helpful. Regarding Transformative, we know that the German Occupation more than promoted the harmful behavior. The French have made an intellectual shift, at least at the philosophical level, that now if one follows a law that future generations regard as a crime against humanity, one is culpable. Now this could be tricky if humans decide slaughtering animals for food is a crime…then everyone would be guilty. Barring this philosophical shift, I am not sure what if anything is in place to prevent it from happening again except for shame.

On the restortative level, the SNCF has paid renumerations for people deported, donated money to commemorative events and structures, etc.

Again, the above is helping me sort through the issues more clearly.