In this article, I describe and systematize the different answers to the question 'What is ubuntu?' that I have been able to identify among South Africans of African descent (SAADs). I show that it is possible to distinguish between two clusters of answers. The answers of the first cluster all define ubuntu as a moral quality of a person, while the answers of the second cluster all define ubuntu as a phenomenon (for instance a philosophy, an ethic, African humanism, or, a worldview) according to which persons are interconnected. The concept of a person is of central importance to all the answers of both clusters, which means that to understand these answers, it is decisive to raise the question of who counts as a person according to SAADs. I show that some SAADs define all Homo sapiens as persons, whereas others hold the view that only some Homo sapiens count as persons: only those who are black, only those who have been incorporated into personhood, or only those who behave in a morally acceptable manner. 1 I want to thank all the people from South Africa who have informed me about their understanding of ubuntu. Furthermore, I want to direct special thanks to the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, the Khulumani Support Group, Prince Velekhaya Shange from the Zulu Royal House, and Bodil Sandegaard for helping me to set up interviews. Thanks also to

No abstract

It has frequently been argued that the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was committed to restorative justice (RJ), and that RJ has deep historical roots in African indigenous cultures by virtue of its congruence both with ubuntu and with African indigenous justice systems (AIJS). In this article, I look into the question of what RJ is. I also present the finding that the term 'restorative justice' appears only in transcripts of three public TRC hearings, and the hypothesis that the TRC first really began to take notice of the term 'restorative justice' after April 1997, when the South African Law Commission published an Issue Paper dealing with RJ. Furthermore, I show that neither the connection between RJ and ubuntu nor the connection between RJ and AIJS is as straightforward and unproblematic as often assumed. 1 A draft version of this article was presented at the conference 'Conceptions of Justice', Aarhus, 28 June 2012. I want to thank all those who were present for their comments. Furthermore, I want to direct special thanks to Steen Wackerhausen, Aase Rieck Sørensen, Birgitte B.N. Gade and Lucy Seton-Watson. I am particularly grateful for your guidance and comments. Christie, Randy Barnett and Howard Zehr during the period 1950-1990. I will also explain that today, the term 'restorative justice' is used by so many different people, in so many different contexts and for so many different purposes, that the meaning of the term has become quite vague. There is no agreement on what RJ is. The next thing I will do is return to the issue of RJ and the South African truth and reconciliation process. Firstly, I will present the finding that the term 'restorative justice' appears only in the transcripts of three public TRC hearings (one victim hearing and two special hearings), whereupon I will explore the use of the term 'restorative justice' in the Truth and Reconciliation of South Africa Report (hereafter 'the TRC Report' or simply 'the Report'). The understanding of RJ in the TRC Report is inspired by the understanding of RJ in Issue Paper 7, published by the South African Law Commission in April 1997. It is my hypothesis that the TRC first really began to take notice of the term 'restorative justice' after the publication of this Issue Paper. If this is true, then it does, to a considerable extent, represent a retrospective self-interpretation when the Report describes the TRC as an institution committed to RJ. In the last part of the article, I will show that in post-apartheid South Africa, a number of people have argued that RJ has deep historical roots in African indigenous cultures by being congruent with ubuntu and African indigenous justice systems (AIJS). This needs to be understood within the context of the call for an African renaissance in post-apartheid South Africa, and the call for Africanization in post-colonial Africa more generally. If it could be shown that RJ has deep historical roots in African cultures, then this would have legitimizing effects on RJ among people who ...

In this article, I explore the historical origin and development of the use of the term "restorative justice" in published sources. The main argument is that the growing popularity of the term and its expanding use makes increasingly blurred what restorative justice is. I begin by investigating the term's international usage, tracing it back to written sources from the nineteenth century. Then, I cite personal communication with Howard Zehr to describe how his use of the term was inspired by Albert Eglash. Zehr initially popularised the term and, in the 1990s, use of the term expanded. In the 2000s, the term began to appear in United Nations and European Union documents, illustrating that restorative justice had become an internationally recognised approach to justice. After describing this international development, I analyse the Danish context, where the term "restorative justice" began to appear in writings around the year 2000. Around the same time, the existing Danish victim offender mediation programme became connected to restorative justice. Later, Danish practices outside the area of criminal justice became associated with the term. In conclusion, I argue that a potential problem of the expanded use of the term "restorative justice"-both in Denmark and internationally-is that usage may become so broad that the concept loses its meaning.

Objectives When offenders or victims are randomly assigned to receive experimental vs. current treatments, the external validity of results may depend on whether different treatments are delivered by similar kinds of treatment providers. When treatment providers volunteer to deliver innovative practices in an experiment, it is unclear whether outcomes depend on the content of the treatment, enthusiasm of the providers for the new practice, or both. In such situations, the potential for what we describe as differential predisposition of volunteers for a new treatment raises a question of external validity. Methods We describe the process by which 14 out of 29 mediators across seven Danish police districts came to deliver a new, restorative conferencing method of conducting face-to-face meetings between offenders and their victims, in comparison to longstanding mediation methods. Results We negotiated with all seven District mediation leaders and all 29 of their mediators to use partial random assignment of 14 of the mediators to deliver the new, restorative model. The 14 trained providers of the new method were substantially similar in several measureable characteristics to the 15 other mediators who continued to use the preexisting model, but we cannot measure directly the extent or balance of their predispositions for delivering each model. Conclusions While small work teams pose obstacles to simple random assignment of treatment providers to deliver experimental practices, the random assignment of victims and offenders to two different models of service might be made more externally valid by use of partial random assignment of service providers.