Program Goals

Advocates of restitution have long espoused accountability as a primary program goal. Although accountability may mean different things to different people, the concept generally is understood to mean that offenders must "make good" on the harm they have caused to their victims and communities. Although accountability alone is considered an important value -- independently of any other goals -- in practice it has beneficial spinoff effects in the areas of public safety and competency enhancement (Bazemore, 1988). For this reason, accountability is the cornerstone of the "balanced approach" to juvenile justice (Maloney, Armstrong, and Romig, 1988). Other important goals of restitution are offender treatment and rehabilitation, reparations to victims, and punishment (Schneider, 1985).

In a 1984 RESTTA survey of restitution programs, respondents were asked to rate the importance of these four goals on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most important. The same request was made of respondents to the 1991 survey. The results are displayed in Table 5. Some important differences emerge. First, the relative importance of victim reparations and offender treatment reverses. By a substantial margin, the victim reparations category has replaced the offender treatment category for second place in order of importance. Second, the importance of offender accountability appears to have decreased slightly, from an average score of 9.7 in 1984 to an average of 8.7 in 1991. Third, the importance of punishment has increased over the years from an average score of 3.3 to 4.8. It should be noted that over the years, both the rate and severity of crime have increased, and populations in prisons and juvenile training schools have reached all-time highs. Movement toward an increasingly "get tough" attitude is clearly evident.