For instance, New Zealand exercises family group conferencing and victim-offender mediation, Native Americans utilize circle sentencing, South Africa conducts conferences, and Japan carries out shaming ceremonies. Despite the differences in models of restorative justice, there are core elements and values that characterize the concept. John Braithwaite, who has written about and researched extensively restorative justice, delineates its core values as “healing rather than hurting, moral learning, community participation and community caring, respectful dialogue, forgiveness, responsibility, apology and making amends.” He hypothesizes that the process works best with “a specter of punishment in the background, but never threatened in the foreground,” illustrating that restorative justice alone might not be sufficient with all offenders, victims, or…