Value beyond measurement when working towards peace

Reviews the book, Restorative justice: Promoting peace and wellbeing edited by Theo Gavrielides and Gabriel Velez (2023). In this book, Gavrielides (of Marquette University) and Velez (founder and director of Restorative Justice for All) have curated a timely collection of chapters to make more explicit the connections between restorative justice, peace, and psychology, and through doing so, to challenge practitioners and researchers to resist practicing in isolation from one another. Further, the authors demonstrate how nurturing these synergistic relationships could serve to further peace—an aspiration of each discipline. Grounded in practice and research, the multidisciplinary and geographically dispersed authors offer readers a critical and nuanced glimpse into the opportunities and gaps in restorative justice theory and practice from the perspective of psychologists and other associated disciplines. Restorative justice and peace psychology are integrated throughout the chapters to demonstrate the potential for these approaches to support the development of cultures of peace and the disruption of cycles of violence at the internal, interpersonal and intergroup, institutional, and societal levels. For psychologists interested in the integration of restorative justice with psychology on a theoretical, practical, or evaluative level, this book offers a range of understandings. Further research and integration with peace psychology could shield restorative justice from being co-opted by institutions where power is unequally distributed and accountability to the theory, practice, and community is limited. At the heart of restorative justice is a commitment to our shared humanity and interconnectedness, to a process of trust building and repairing, and to the virtue of justice. This book offers the reader an important reminder of the potential of restorative justice to further contribute to building a culture of peace.