Restorative Justice: An Alternative Dispute Resolution Approach to Criminal Behavior

Beginning with the end of the Mass Prison Era in the late 1800s, Americans have looked for a better way to respond to crime and those who commit it. Since the Reformatory Era, the United States has swayed between punitive models based on either the Reformatory or Retributive theories. Despite the changes we have made, our criminal justice system suffers from long waiting periods for a trial, overburdened public defenders, overcrowded jails and prisons that often lead to unsafe conditions for the inmates and corrections officers, and many other problems