Abstract

When Restorative Justice (RJ) underwent a renaissance in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the arguably dominant view was that RJ was a radical departure from punishment, a non-penal method for holding offenders accountable. However, there is a movement afoot to conceptualize RJ differently—not as an alternative to punishment, but as an unconventional form of punishment. This paper contends that assimilating RJ to punishment is a mistake twice over. First, RJ is just conceptually distinct from punishment. Second, the things that make RJ conceptually distinct have important moral implications. Retributivists—or, at least, retributivists who emphasize the importance of respecting offenders and denouncing wrongdoing—should support RJ over punishment in all cases where RJ would be appropriate. Punishing when RJ is a live option is, in a surprising turn, to offend against core retributive values.