May 2010

Understanding the relationships between local court system and restorative justice in contrast to the International Criminal Court (ICC)

The article aims to compare the role that the International Criminal Court, as opposed to local courts is able to play in providing restorative justice in post-conflict societies. The author examines in detail the experience of the Rwandese ‘Gacaca’ courts, in order to demonstrate that local courts achieve better results than international or Western-biased criminal courts. The article further raises...

Author(s): Oricho Otieno Dennis

May 2010

More conciliation and less punishment: Demanding a public choice

The author argues that if societies wish to promote reconciliation and restoration in criminal matters, for which there are excellent reasons, the criminal codes need to be changed so as to allow for the procedures aimed at such reconciliation and restoration. Restorative justice and punitive justice fundamentally exclude each other both in the theoretical and political conception of aims and in procedural terms. The...

Author(s): John Blad