An Exploratory Integrative Review of Restorative Justice and Social Work: Untapped Potential for Pursuing Social Justice

Restorative justice is an approach that centers the voices of those most impacted by harm through facilitated dialogue, perspective-taking, and storytelling. Restorative justice and social work have mutually beneficial and overlapping values and interests. The aim of this integrative review was to determine how and in what settings these two areas have been integrated over time. Eight academic research databases were searched between 1997-2019, resulting in 27 articles that met our search criteria. We identified three primary themes: conceptual articles, articles related to practice, and articles pertaining to social work education. Our findings indicate the need to implement restorative justice approaches in other social work practice settings beyond the criminal justice system and incorporate restorative justice into social work curricula.