Responding to Animal Crimes Through a Restorative Justice Approach
« As a broad category of penological response that aims to repair the harms crime inflicts on victims, hold offenders accountable, and promote resilient communities, restorative justice has venerable roots. Nonetheless, the explicit application of restorative justice approaches within the USA’s criminal justice system is quite young – and all but unheard of as applied to crimes with animal victims: abuse, neglect, animal fighting, and animal sexual exploitation. Join Animal Legal Defense Fund criminal justice attorneys for an exploration – rooted in emergent scholarship – of the role restorative justice could play in our legal system’s response to animal cruelty.
This session will begin by summarizing the history and current use of restorative justice in the context of the USA’s criminal justice system. Next, we will examine the ways that a restorative justice framework focuses on animals as the inherent victims of animal cruelty—and therefore as the party who is most in need of an outcome that acknowledges their suffering and – to the extent possible – restores their well-being. Finally, we will outline what a restorative justice framework might look like as applied to animal cruelty cases – and how it could be drawn on as an option impactful for victims, offenders, and communities, building empathy, reducing recidivism, and increasing rehabilitation. »
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Évènement de The Justice Clearinghouse
