Justice That Transforms, Volume One

Restorative Justice was a term and concept largely unused before the mid-1970s. Wayne Northey happened to be in on the ground floor of facilitating its worldwide adoption as a challenge to Western retributive justice systems, ultimately to violent responses to conflict domestically and internationally. The most replicated early model of Restorative Justice, based on the well-known "Elmira Case," was a Canadian first, initially dubbed Victim Offender Reconciliation Project (VORP). The author became its second director in 1977. The term "mediation" later displaced the more religious word, "reconciliation," as the model spread outside Christian moorings; and "program" displaced the initially more tentative "project." At seminary, Northey had learned to think through one's vocation theologically. He began in that vein, writing and publishing on this profound call for a systemic "paradigm shift," and has been at it ever since. This publication is volume 1 of a series of his collected writings, of which two additional volumes may be found online. Two or three further volumes are projected.

Wayne Northey has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974, and has published in this field since 1977. He was nominated in 1999 for the first Correctional Service of Canada Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award. He retired as director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman: Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2), British Columbia, Canada, in 2014. In his retirement he continues involvement in local, national, and international Restorative Justice Programs.