Restorative justice has developed into a recognized sanction or intervention in several countries. Literature shows that restorative justice is experienced as a procedural just approach by participants. Furthermore, a strong rejection of the behavior of the violators would reinforce reintegrative shaming in the process. Finally, stopping crime (desistance) could be achieved if the restorative justice approach would include reconstructing the self-image of the participants. This systematic literature review examines to what extent restorative justice contributes to compliant behavior by individuals and corporations. Although direct effects of restorative justice on compliance and recidivism fail to appear, procedural justice and reintegrative shame are positively affected. The results offer practical implementations and challenges for further research.

This article discusses the importance of reflection for prison staff. Their work is both physical and emotionally incriminating. That increases risk on turnover, burn-out, psychosomatic diseases and negative experiences with prisoners. To render all challenges in their work it’s important to build up resiliency. One of the means to stimulate resilience is organized reflection. It is described how guided by experts, reflecting on own experiences can contribute to resilience of prison employees and strengthen their learning capacity. That is done by literature study and a description of experiences with organized reflection in PI Vught.