Ethical Dilemmas in Restorative Justice Research

The call for reflexivity and ethical awareness among criminologists and criminal justice researchers is not new. Much has been written about how the nature of research on crime and justice raises specific ethical dilemmas and challenges. In the field of restorative justice, however, ethical impasses have typically appeared only incidentally in the literature – often as part of broader discussions about research methods or tools used in specific studies. This chapter aims to highlight and examine both potential and experienced ethical issues, challenges, and dilemmas encountered when conducting research in the field of restorative justice. We explore this central theme through a series of sub-questions: Do restorative principles imply a specific ethical framework to guide researchers’ decision-making during research design, data collection, and analysis? Does restorative justice's participatory ethos shape the relationship between researchers and research participants? These and other questions were posed to researchers working in the field of restorative justice through interviews conducted by the authors. The respondents' reflections, along with insights from our own research experience, form the core of this chapter, as we explore how ethical dilemmas may shape restorative justice research.