Restorative justice fits human nature more than retribution does
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Flavia Corso challenges the assumption that retributive justiceβpunishment-based criminal systems that exclude offenders from societyβaligns with human nature more than restorative justice approaches focused on healing and reconciliation. Using the metaphor of someone stepping on your foot on a bus, she contrasts traditional systems that remove offenders without communication with restorative approaches where sincere apologies and remorse enable immediate conflict resolution. While conventional wisdom holds that humans need external, punitive intervention to resolve disputes, Corso argues this view fundamentally misunderstands our evolutionary psychology.
Drawing on research from Morris Hoffman and evolutionary theorists, Corso demonstrates that humans evolved both punishment and forgiveness instincts, with forgiveness often being more adaptive since constant retaliation wastes energy and endangers survival. She shows how sincere apologies trigger measurable physiological responses that reduce victim anger, and how our ability to detect genuine versus fake remorse reflects millions of years of social evolution. This scientific evidence resonates with Indigenous practices from MΔori, Inuit, and Navajo cultures that have long centered justice around maintaining social harmony rather than inflicting suffering, suggesting Western criminal justice may have forgotten ancestral wisdom about human nature’s inherent capacity for reconciliation.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Retribution as Institutionalized Revenge
Traditional criminal justice systems embody retributivism, imposing proportionate suffering through social exclusion while removing conflict resolution from victims and offenders themselves.
Forgiveness as Survival Strategy
Evolutionary psychology reveals forgiveness increased survival odds by avoiding costly cycles of retaliation, making it equally or more adaptive than punishment instincts.
Physiological Power of Sincere Apologies
Genuine remorse triggers measurable calming effects on victims’ cardiovascular systems, while humans evolved sophisticated detection of insincere apologies through nonverbal cues.
Partner Choice Over Control
Cooperation evolved more through voluntary partner selection than coercive punishment, with restorative justice mirroring this non-punitive preference for mutual evaluation and reconciliation.
Indigenous Wisdom Validates Science
MΔori, Inuit, and Navajo restorative practices centered on harmony and balance predate Western psychology’s discoveries about human reconciliation instincts by millennia.
Implementation Gap Problem
Despite international recognition, restorative justice survives only as an appendix to traditional systems, often used to expedite trials rather than promote genuine reconciliation.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Reconciliation as Natural Instinct
Corso argues that restorative justice better aligns with human evolutionary psychology than retributive punishment systems. Drawing on evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and cross-cultural evidence, she demonstrates that humans possess deep-rooted instincts for forgiveness and relationship repair that traditional criminal justice systems actively suppress rather than harness. This misalignment explains both the failures of punishment-based systems and the potential transformative power of restorative approaches.
Purpose
Persuasion Through Interdisciplinary Synthesis
The article functions as advocacy for restorative justice by grounding ethical claims in scientific evidence rather than moral philosophy alone. Corso seeks to overcome skepticism about restorative justice’s “utopian” idealism by demonstrating it reflects rather than contradicts human nature. By synthesizing evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and Indigenous knowledge systems, she establishes that Western punishment-based justice is the aberration, not the natural order.
Structure
Analogical Introduction β Scientific Evidence β Cultural Validation
Corso begins with the accessible bus metaphor to make abstract justice theories concrete and emotionally resonant, then systematically builds scientific evidence from evolutionary psychology about forgiveness instincts, physiological responses to apologies, and cooperation mechanisms. She concludes by showing how Indigenous practices from MΔori, Inuit, and Navajo cultures validate these scientific findings through millennia-old wisdom, framing Western retributive justice as collective amnesia rather than progress.
Optimistic, Persuasive & Intellectually Rigorous
Corso writes with measured optimism about human capacity for reconciliation, avoiding both naive utopianism and cynical pessimism. She acknowledges retributive justice’s dominance while carefully building the case that it contradicts rather than expresses our true nature. Her tone balances academic rigorβciting specific researchers and theoriesβwith accessible explanation that makes complex evolutionary psychology comprehensible without oversimplification.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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The act of harming someone in response to harm they inflicted, often creating cycles of mutual revenge and escalating conflict.
“Displays of remorse seem to soften the urge for retaliation and promote forgiveness.”
Deep regret or guilt for a wrong committed, often expressed through apology and indicating genuine acknowledgment of harm caused.
“You see the worry and embarrassment on their face, and you hear their words of concern and regret.”
The practice of forcing someone to do something through threats, intimidation, or physical force rather than voluntary choice.
“Partner control relies on coercion and fear of punishment, while partner choice operates through a more subtle mechanism.”
The restoration of friendly relations after conflict or estrangement, often involving mutual understanding and forgiveness.
“There is a lack of reflection on the crucial importance of the emotional and psychological need for reconciliation.”
An act of revenge or retaliation against someone who has harmed you, often perpetuating cycles of mutual aggression.
“Consider what constant reprisals in hunter-gatherer societies would have meant in terms of wasted time and energy.”
Characterized by the treatment of the whole person or system rather than just isolated parts, considering all interconnected elements.
“RJ embraces these values, shifting away from a paradigm centred on security values to adopt a holistic view of conflict management.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to the article, evolutionary psychology research shows humans evolved punishment instincts but not forgiveness instincts.
2According to signalling theory as applied to restorative justice, why is detecting sincere versus insincere apologies evolutionarily important?
3Which sentence best explains why the article claims restorative justice might be morally preferable to retributive justice?
4Evaluate these statements about Indigenous practices and restorative justice:
MΔori concept of “Utu” describes maintaining balance in social connections through how people interact with one another.
The article claims Western science discovered restorative principles that Indigenous cultures later adopted.
Navajo concept “Hozho” encompasses living in accordance with oneself, others, and nature to attain wellness and harmony.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5What can be reasonably inferred about why the article claims restorative justice “manages to survive only thanks to the old punitive system”?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
The bus scenario demonstrates two fundamentally different responses to harm. In the retributive version, the offender is removed from the bus for a year without any communication between victim and wrongdoerβconflict resolution is delegated to authority (the driver), punishment is imposed, but the victim feels unsettled because the incident remains unresolved emotionally. In the restorative version, direct communication occurs: the victim sees the offender’s genuine remorse and hears their apology, allowing immediate relational repair without involving authority or exclusion. This contrast illustrates how restorative justice centers on healing relationships through dialogue rather than inflicting suffering through isolation.
Partner choice and partner control represent two evolutionary mechanisms for promoting cooperation. Partner control relies on coercionβforcing cooperation through punishment or threat of punishment. Partner choice operates more subtly through voluntary selectionβuncooperative individuals are simply excluded and replaced by more collaborative partners, creating social pressure to cooperate without direct force. The article argues partner choice played a more prominent role in developing complex cooperative societies, and that restorative justice mirrors this preference by enabling victims and offenders to voluntarily engage in mutual evaluation and reconciliation rather than coercively imposing punishment.
Citing criminologist Nils Christie’s concept, Corso argues that traditional systems take conflicts away from the people directly involvedβvictims and offendersβand place them in the hands of third parties like lawyers, judges, and state institutions. This removes the parties’ agency to resolve their own disputes and heal their own relationships. The system delegates conflict management to professionals who aren’t personally affected, transforming intimate harms into abstract legal cases. Restorative justice, by contrast, returns conflicts to those involved, trusting in their inherent capacity to communicate, understand each other’s perspectives, and work toward reconciliation without external imposition of predetermined punishments.
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This article is classified as Advanced difficulty due to its sophisticated interdisciplinary synthesis across evolutionary psychology, criminology, and anthropology. It requires readers to follow complex arguments that connect scientific evidence to ethical conclusions, understand specialized terminology from multiple academic fields, and grasp how empirical claims about human nature generate normative implications for justice policy. The article also demands appreciation of how Indigenous knowledge systems relate to Western scientific frameworks, and ability to track how concrete examples (the bus metaphor) connect to abstract theoretical claims about human evolutionary history.
Traditional retributive justice assumes humans are incapable of resolving conflicts without external coercive intervention and that justice requires imposing suffering on wrongdoers. This reflects a pessimistic view that people naturally lack the capacity or willingness to repair relationships voluntarily. Restorative justice, by contrast, trusts that victims and offenders possess inherent prosocial instincts motivating them to cooperate and reconcile spontaneously when given appropriate conditions. This optimism isn’t naive idealism but empirically grounded in evolutionary psychology showing forgiveness and reconciliation as adaptive, naturally selected human capacities. The optimistic view holds that people are essentially capable of getting things right when conflicts belong to them rather than being appropriated by state institutions.
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