Research on restorative justice practices is a research brief by Maryfield et al. (2020) written to familiarize the audience with an alternative option to traditional forms of justice. Inefficiency of punishment-based systems is a recurring theme in judicial research. Restorative justice offers a different approach to managing violations of law, which is supposed to fix the drawbacks of the traditional justice framework. Maryfield et al. (2020) present a research brief that portrays restorative justice practices in a positive manner, the goal of which is to convince the audience that these practices are a better alternative. The extensive use of statistical evidence, overview of historic trends, and the logic coherence make the authors’ argument compelling and persuasive, yet researcher bias in sample choice might compromise the validity of evidence.
The brief itself is divided into six major parts – introduction, definition, history, review of common applications, overview of empirical research, analysis of systematic reviews, and summary. The overall flow of the brief is logical, as it transitions from explaining what restorative justice is and how it became prevalent to more complex considerations of its effectiveness and benefits. As a result, the structure of the paper allows the audience without any judicial background to immerse in the narrative and understand the relevance and significance of restorative justice. The authors’ thesis is that restorative justice is both a prospective and effective field, which should be fully incorporated into actual US judicial practice and draw more scientific inquiries.
The authors’ argument has three dimensions – historic, structural, and factual. Historic aspect is represented by the overview of the sociopolitical context of the emergence of restorative justice in America. Specifically, the combination of judicial experimental programs and the rise of the victims’ right movement in the 1990s has fueled the demand for alternative system of dealing with perpetrators. The structural dimension is represented by the overview of the variety of restorative justice practices that are currently applied. In total, seven practices are presented to portray restorative justice as a flexible framework that can address the unique characteristics of each case. The factual argument stems from extensive references to research studying the effectiveness of such practices.
Review of systematic studies is the major part of the brief, which also provides the most evidence. Overall, nine studies are addressed, most of which focused on juvenile participants. All of these papers report a certain increase in satisfaction with justice, reduction in recidivism, and better victim treatment. However, there are two problems with this sample size, the first of which is researcher bias evident in the absence of studies that would prove the inefficiency of restorative justice. The second issue is that all of these studies explored the effect of restorative justice primarily on juveniles rather than adults, which might compromise the conclusion that these practices are effective for everyone. Although the authors do recognize that some findings are inconclusive, they do not properly address the limitations of research.
In conclusion, the research brief makes a convincing argument for using restorative justice, but closer examination of evidence reveals researcher bias, obfuscating the results. By choosing studies that explored juveniles, the authors extrapolate the findings to the overall population despite the absence of significant data that actually support using restorative justice on adults. Meanwhile, the absence of studies supporting the opposite argument implies the unwillingness of authors to discuss the drawbacks of alternatives traditional punishment. The most appropriate way to correct these issues would be to add the missing research and sample and address the overall picture. Aside from biased evidence, the brief is simple and is successful at convincing the readers that restorative justice practices should be prioritized in the judicial system.
Reference
Maryfield, B., Przybylski, R., & Myrent, M. (2020). Research on restorative justice practices. Justice Research and Statistics Association. Web.