Circle Sentencing
Definition
A community-led sentencing process, drawn from Indigenous justice practice in Yukon, Canada, in which a judge, offender, victim and community members sit in a circle to decide a sentence together.
Related terms
- Family Group Conferencing
- A restorative process, developed in New Zealand youth justice, that brings the offender's and victim's extended families together with professionals to agree...
- Net Widening
- The expansion of formal state control that occurs when a diversionary or community-based measure draws in minor cases that would otherwise have...
- Restorative Justice
- A process in which the victim, the offender, and relevant community members meet with a trained facilitator to discuss the harm caused,...
- Victim-Offender Mediation
- A facilitated, voluntary meeting between a victim and the offender responsible for harming them, aimed at dialogue, acknowledgement of harm and a...
- Reparation
- The general aim shared by restitution, mediation and conferencing: repairing the harm caused by an offence rather than only punishing the offender.
- Restitution
- A remedy ordered against the convicted offender, requiring them to return property, repair harm, or pay the victim directly, as opposed to...
- Restitution Order
- A court-ordered payment, or provision of service, that an offender makes directly to a victim to compensate for a quantifiable financial loss...
- UN Basic Principles on Restorative Justice
- The 2002 UN Basic Principles on the Use of Restorative Justice Programmes in Criminal Matters, a non-binding document setting the voluntariness, consent...
Explained in these topics
- Restorative Justice Mechanisms: Restitution and Victim-Offender MediationA community-led sentencing process, drawn from Indigenous justice practice in Canada, in which a judge, offender, victim and community members sit in a circle...
- Restorative Justice, Restitution, Mediation (Unit VII)