Most of my RJ reading recommendations will already be on your radar. For the sake of your blog readers I’ll use this space to simply highlight David Cayley’s The Expanding Prison, a book you first told me about. The reason I see this as a strong text is that it effectively combines 1) a convincing critique of the hard-on-crime perspective, 2) lots of great case narrative content, and 3) examples of how justice workers within the system can embrace restorative alternatives. For our stage of restorative justice progress in North America, I see this as an important book that more folks need to read.

When you pull book and article titles together, it may be helpful to distinguish a) books about RJ foundations, concepts and models, and b) books that specifically help practitioners and program coordinators to do restorative work. The former area certainly has the lion’s share of what is out there; the latter area also has plenty available, but in shorter formats, often in conjunction with training resources. My hope is that more substantial writings in the latter area will surface soon and become useful to the movement.

Finally, current trends of broadening the restorative paradigm beyond the criminal justice realm and also into international peacemaking practices is exciting, but this appears to complexify new efforts to create bibliographies. One thing I appreciate about Mark Umbreit’s writings is that from early on he saw how restorative dialogue would include all models of conflict resolution and larger-scale peacemaking.

Ted Lewis

Our Website: (I’ve added this here because the blog did not seem to allow that entry)
Warm wishes,
Jeannette