75 Am. U. L. Rev. F. 683 (2026).
Abstract
How to best meet the needs of crime victims while also furthering the imperative of decarceration has long vexed advocates and scholars alike. This dilemma comes into sharp focus when one examines two developments in criminal procedure that, until now, have been analyzed separately: victim restitution and restorative justice.
Criminal restitution, the monetary payments ordered from defendants to victims, often fails both groups. Because most defendants are indigent, restitution obligations lengthen defendants’ involvement with the criminal legal system without delivering meaningful compensation to victims, making restitution more symbolic than restorative. At the same time, interest in restorative justice has surged as part of a broader reckoning with the failures of the criminal legal system and search for non- retributive responses to crime. Yet, restorative justice remains underutilized post-conviction.
This Article interweaves these two strands, proposing restorative justice as a novel solution to the failures of criminal restitution. By situating the growing body of literature about criminal restitution alongside that on victims’ rights and restorative justice, it argues that restorative practices can reframe redress in ways that move beyond monetary compensation, while championing decarceration. While not a panacea for all failures of the criminal legal system, restorative justice theory offers a necessary reframing that provides a meaningful path towards the accountability, restoration, and decarceration that are lacking in the current restitution regime.
* Associate Professor of Law and Director, Criminal Defense and Justice Clinic, George Washington University School of Law. I am grateful for helpful feedback, support and encouragement from Jeremy Bearer-Friend, Eduardo Ferrer, Randy Hertz, Laurie Kohn, Katie Kronick, Michael Pinard, Amanda Rogers, Maneka Sinha, Tania Valdez, and Kate Weisburd. I also wish to thank the participants of the Clinical Law Review Writers’ Workshop, Mid-Atlantic Clinicians Writing Workshop, and the George Washington University Law School Clinical Writers’ Workshop for their thoughtful ideas and feedback on earlier drafts. Finally, I am incredibly grateful to my research assistants, Abbi Burgess, Kaitlin Fontana, Zoe Jacobs and Kelly Hennessy, for their invaluable work on this piece.