Restorative justice has emerged around the world as a potent challenge to traditional models of criminal justice, and restorative programmes, policies and legislative reforms are being implemented in many Western nations. However, the underlying aims, values and limits of this paradigm remain somewhat uncertain and those advocating restorative justice have rarely engaged in systematic debate with those defending more traditional conceptions of criminal justice. This volume, containing contributions from international scholars, provides an analytic exploration of restorative justice and its potential advantages and disadvantages. Chapters of the book examine the aims and limiting principles that should govern restorative justice, its appropriate scope of application, its social and legal contexts, its practice and impact in a number of jurisdictions and its relation to more traditional criminal-justice conceptions. The contributions should help clarify the aims that restorative justice might reasonably hope to achieve, the limits that should apply in pursuing these aims and how restorative strategies might comport with, or replace, other penal strategies.