Abstract:

The restorative justice programme is a further development of traditional criminal judicial systems. It is a kind of institutional pattern in a highgrade form rather than a return to the legal action pattern in the primitive society. In essence, the restorative justice programme attempts to replace penalty punishment with nonpenalty punishment in a larger scale; it also attempts to replace criminal liability undertaking with civil liability undertaking in order to solve the problem of criminal liability undertaking; on the procedure, it attempts to use the advantage of the solutions to civil disputes to complement the defects and deficiencies of the solutions to criminal cases. The idea of forgiveness over justice is the ethical foundation of the restorative justice programme. The social foundation of the restorative justice programme lies in the socialization of the state’s power. The judicial authority that represents the state’s will is checked and balanced by this socialized power.