Restorative Justice : Critical Issues

′The book embodies a timely collection of restorative justice topics and is well structured with some of the most learned authorities in the field′ - Magistrate

′The team which teaches the Open University′s Crime Order and Social Control course has long been publishing teaching materials which are gratefully purloined by colleagues elsewhere for use in their own courses. In producing this book they have gone much further than this: not only have they selected an indispensable range of mainly previously published readings, they have also placed them in a theoretical context and succinctly summarised the debates which are taking place and some which need to take place but as yet are in their infancy′ - Vista

Restorative Justice brings together key international writings that trace the development of restorative justice from its diverse beginnings to current global policies and practices. The collection is constructed around the following themes:the theoretical origins of restorative justice; the key principles and substantive practices associated with restorative justice; controversial issues and debates; and future directions and possibilities. A substantial editorial introduction will provide readers with an authorative guide to the critical issues facing restorative justice at the beginning of the 21st century.

Eugene McLaughlin is Professor of Criminology and co-director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Research. He is also a member of the Centre for Law Justice and Journalism. He completed his postgraduate criminology studies at the University of Cambridge and the University of Sheffield. Eugene has held various academic appointments including at the University of Hong Kong, the Open University and the University of Southampton. He has also been Visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, the Department of Communication Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. He is an associate editor of Crime, Media and Cultureand is on the editorial board of Criminal Justice Matters. He has served on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Criminology, Critical Social Policy, the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice and was co-editor of Theoretical Criminology.


My research interests include gender and the police, violence and integrity and ethics in the criminal justice system. I’m also interested in ethnographic research methods, danger, fear and situations where privileged access leads to dilemmas for researchers. In the past I have published articles on police informers and the way they are regulated and the effect of this upon rights and justice. More recently I’ve completed a book about research methods in criminology. My other recent research projects have included studying women bouncers and violence in the context of social control of the night time economy (ESRC Grant reference: RES-000-23-0384-A). This project was called Women on the Door: Female Bouncers in the New Night-time Economy carried out with Professor Dick Hobbs.