Book Review: Understanding Victims and Restorative Justice

• Author: Robert B. Cormier
• Published date: 01 June 2006
• Date: 01 June 2006
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0093854806287781
• Subject Matter: Articles

BOOK REVIEW

Understanding Victims and Restorative Justice, by James Dignan.

Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 2005. 238 pp. ISBN 0-335-20979-3

(paperback) 0-335-20980-7 (hardback).

Restorative justice has received a great deal of attention from scholars in

recent years, and there has been a spate of books published on the subject.

Some of them have been edited compilations of conference proceedings

or collections of papers by authors covering various aspects of the field.

James Dignan’s book is a particularly important contribution to this litera-

ture because it approaches restorative justice from the perspective of vic-

tims. Given the concerns that restorative justice has been driven more by

the needs of offenders than victims, Dignan’s book is a very useful explo-

ration of the potential contribution of restorative justice to victims. As the

author correctly notes at the outset, developments in victimology and

restorative justice have proceeded largely in parallel with little understand-

ing of the relationship between them. This volume seeks to rectify this

shortcoming and succeeds admirably.

Dignan’s book, which is part of the Crime and Justice series edited by

Mike Maguire, is intended as a text for an undergraduate- or graduate-level

course in criminology. As such, the format is designed to serve a pedagog-

ical purpose.

For each chapter, there is a table of contents at the beginning, a summary

or conclusion section at the end, and a bibliography for further reading.

There is also a glossary. The book is very well written, and the organization

of the material is excellent. The single voice through all the chapters is evi-

dent, and it is a pleasure to read. Quite apart from its usefulness as a text,

the book is helpful for practitioners who are looking for a good exposition

of restorative justice from the perspective of victims.

In the introduction, the author first explores the various definitions of

restorative justice and then provides the reader with an analytical framework

that serves as a platform for examining victim-focused reforms, including

restorative justice models, in the subsequent chapters of the book. The frame-

work, titled “typology of victim-focused reforms” (Table I.I, pp. 6-7), describes

how victims are characterized and served/treated within three different

broadly defined models: the welfare model, the criminal justice model, and

restorative justice, which is subdivided into four separate types of restorative

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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 33 No. 3, June 2006 411-414

DOI: 10.1177/0093854806287781

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