Explain balanced and restorative justice (BARJ). Do you agree or disagree that justice is best served when the victim, community and offender are viewed as equal clients of the justice system? Why or why not?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• According to the balance approach, the juvenile justice system should give equal weight to offender accountability, competency development, and community protection.
• Holding offenders accountable to victims. Offender accountability refers specifically to the requirement that offenders make amends for the harm resulting from their crimes by repaying or restoring losses to victims and the community.
• Providing competency development for offenders in the system so they can pursue legitimate endeavors after release. Competency development, the rehabilitative goal for intervention, requires that people who enter the justice system should exit the system more capable of being productive and responsible in the community.
• Ensuring community safety. The community protection goal explicitly acknowledges and endorses a long-time public expectation—a safe and secure community.
• The balanced approach means that justice policies and priorities should seek to address each of the three goals in each case and that system balance should be pursued.
• The goal of achieving balance suggests that no one objective can take precedence over any other without creating a system that is "out of balance" and implies that efforts to achieve one goal (e.g., offender accountability) should not hinder efforts to achieve other goals.
• Student views will vary.