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Changing Lenses

Howard Zehr

Restorative justice

It is the movement-defining text that gave restorative justice its conceptual framework and language.

Synopsis

A foundational case that crime should be understood as harm to relationships requiring repair, not merely as lawbreaking demanding punishment.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Justice should ask who was harmed and what they need, rather than only which rule was broken and what punishment is owed.

It reorients justice from abstract retribution toward repairing concrete harm to victims and communities.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility.

Reading note

Read it as a paradigm shift, contrasting its restorative lens point by point against the retributive one.

Best paired with

H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility

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