Concept of Crime and Concern with Stigmatization in Restorative Justice Studies

Abstract

The article hereby presented aims to evaluate, by bibliographical studies and deductive reasoning, the usage and necessity of the vocable crime by authors and defenders of the restorative model of justice who resist to abandon it. Originates of the questioning about the necessity of theorical distinctions between the conflicts of civil and criminal nature, since the principles of Restorative Justice leads to the impossibility of distinctions in the formation of the dynamics of restorative circles based on the legal definition of the conflict in discussion, and the overcoming of the inherent stigmatizations of the retributive penal model. The hypothesis in debate is that the conservation of a autonomous penal justice and the usage of the vocable crime may arise from a ontological thinking of those, partially inconsistent with Restorative Justice’s aims. It concludes, after analysing the presented arguments, that the critics of the abandonment of the word crime and the distinction between criminal and civil justice are guided by very inferior problems than the ones caused by the conservation of the stigmatizing language and structure, that has the potential to strengthen the initial obstacles of the restorative circles and hamper its success in creating a pacific solution of conflicts.