Book Review: Tempered Zeal: A Columbia Law Professor\u27s Year on the Streets with the New York City Police. by H. Richard Uviller.

Book review: Tempered Zeal: A Columbia Law Professor\u27s Year on the Streets with the New York City Police. By H. Richard Uviller. Chicago: Contemporary Books. 1988. Pp. xix, 234. Reviewed by: David Dolinko

Restorative Justice and the Justification of Punishment

Restorative justice is a broad term, defined differently by its various proponents. It can be thought of as a matter of employing a variety of novel methods to accomplish purposes traditionally ascribed to the criminal justice system, such as deterring an offender from committing further crimes, deterring other potential offenders from lawbreaking, and rehabilitating or reforming the offender by effecting changes in his or her psyche. It can be conceived more radically, however, as involving not merely new ways of achieving familiar goals but new visions of the goals to pursue. As one acquainted with broad philosophical musings on the criminal justice system\u27s goals and justifications, but sadly ignorant about the real-world functioning of competing criminal justice regimes, I am naturally drawn to the second way of thinking about restorative justice. More precisely, I wish to explore certain problematic aspects of this new conception of the purposes and orientation of criminal justice. Because there are many advocates of this new conception whose formulations vary in a host of ways, and because my exposure to this exciting body of work is both recent and limited, I will focus largely on the particular vision of restorative justice championed by my fellow panelist, John Braithwaite. Braithwaite\u27s work has the particular advantages of clear and thorough exposition and an engagement with traditional philosophical issues. The aim here is to bring out some of the conundrums that might arise from viewing restorative justice, as Braithwaite envisions it, against the framework of the longstanding philosophical consideration of the nature, purpose, and justification of criminal punishment