AUSTIN – Derek Cohen, policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for Effective Justice, today released the report entitled "Reviving Restorative Justice: A Blueprint for Texas," in which he explains how Texas' current criminal justice system identifies the state as the victim of a crime, and that the actual victim plays too small of a role in the process. As a solution to this legal tradition, Cohen presents the case for Texas to adopt the restorative justice model, allowing the objective of the system to be the restoration of justice to the victim.
"Unlike the traditional state-centric justice model, the restorative justice model seeks to reconcile the victim and offender and provide reparations for the harm done in the commission of a crime," said Cohen. "By establishing the victim as the center of the process, these initiatives offer promise in providing greater victim satisfaction, increased public safety, and better offender outcomes-often at less cost than other criminal sanctions.
"Restorative justice programs represent a modern development in criminal justice. In contrast to the current legal tradition of establishing the State as the victim of criminal activity, this approach prioritizes the victim. The loss suffered by the victim is the tangible wrong to be remedied, not the injury to the state; an abstract entity."
The entire paper can be read here:http://bit.ly/1jbEaWf.
Derek Cohen is a policy analyst with the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for Effective Justice.
Primary website: www.TexasPolicy.com
Facebook page:www.Facebook.com/TexasPublicPolicyFoundation
Twitter feed: www.Twitter.com/TPPF
-30-
"