Introduction to the Symposium: Communities, Organizations, and Restorative Justice Reform

Restorative justice, in treating organizations as communities, and viewing them as both cause and solution to problems of crime, harm and conflict, provides its revolutionary insights and groundbreaking efforts to transform and localize intervention in response to these problems. The contributions to this special issue focus on restorative justice as a way of addressing crime and crime-related concerns to the greatest extent possible within such community organizational contexts (i.e., workplaces, schools, universities, and residential programs for delinquents). The authors demonstrate how restorative practices have implications for community building and organizational reform based generally on a learning theory of cultural change. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005symposium, communities, public organizations, restorative justice, government, justice administration,