This short book (less than 100 pages, with back matter) provides a high level overview of restorative justice. Restorative justice, at it's heart, is about respect. More functionally, while noting that no single definition can capture a field with the diversity of restorative justice, Zehr offers a working definition, "Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible.

What this book focuses on is the background and philosophy that goes into that definition. It does not aim to discuss the applications and practices of restorative justice except in so far as they are valuable for illustrating the general idea.

As such, I recommend this book for someone (like myself), who has heard enough about restorative justice to be interested in the idea but does not have much background information or a need for practical advice in the area. ( )

A very neat little summary of restorative justice. As the author says, it is "for those who have heard the term and are curious" and "also for those who are involved in the field but are becoming unclear or losing track of what they are trying to do." It serves those purposes admirably. ( )