News and events

"Advocates of restorative justice often speak of it as benefiting victims, offenders and the community; it makes a neat triangle on a flip chart. But some people have questioned what the word ‘community’ means. In modern cities, neighbors often do not know each other. There may be a community of people living far from each other with shared interests such as playing tennis or using the internet, a religious community who go to a place of worship, a spiritual community who practice yoga, or communities of people with other shared characteristics, such as being Scottish, or gay. There are communities of people who are near, or beyond, the boundaries of the law, such as drug users or pedophiles. The community is everyone: the shopkeeper, the doctor or nurse – even the bureaucrat from the Ministry of Education or Justice is a member of the community when he or she comes home. Perhaps when thinking of individuals it would be better to use a different word, such as ‘members of the public."

The full article as well as this and previuos issues of "Connections" can be downloaded from here:
http://www.voma.org/connect.shtml