Introduction: Restorative and Responsive Human Services

The overall goal of this book is to advance the understanding and fit of restorative justice and responsive regulation, its achievements and limits, evidence and trajectories with particular focus on the ways their theories and applications serve as a bridge between disciplines and between formal and informal human services. We take up restorative justice as justice that heals the harms that derive from injustice and regulation as what we do when obligations are not being honored. Many of the chapters in this collection show that this makes restorative justice a relational form of justice. As will be discussed in greater detail, responsive regulation builds from a framework of empowerment and aims to engage actors in cooperating with the development of the details of how their obligations will be met even when their compliance could be required. Restorative justice coupled with responsive regulatory strategies help chart practical pathways for moving from healing to problem solving and contributes to the development of theory and research relevant to tackling complex social problems.