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Interventions

No 1 (2018): Abolishing Carceral Society, 195-206

Revolution and Restorative Justice: An Anarchist Perspective

Published
December 1, 2018

Abstract

Increasingly critics of mass incarceration are confident that restorative justice is an alternative that will slowly replace or reform the state’s monopoly on “justice.” It is particularly of restorative justice as an “alternative” to state retribution that I remain skeptical. To my eyes, restorative justice has within it no revolutionary power remotely sufficient to undo the embedded ideology of retribution, nor does it bear any promise of truly challenging the material power of the state and the prison industrial complex. Restorative justice is a powerful, therapeutic practice that creates healing for individuals and exposes the stark failure of the state’s rehabilitative enterprise. However, we must cease to see it as a structural alternative that will take the place of incarceration. Though it is a useful tool for undermining the retributive narrative of the state, it is insufficient to meet the challenges of ever-encroaching state legality and mass incarceration.


Author Biography

Peter Kletsan (a pseudonym) is trained in philosophy and is only peripherally an academic, sometimes teaching community college courses and devoting the rest of his time to local political organizing. Peter is an active member of the Oakland chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.