Abstract
This Article argues that community is a central but deeply misunderstood feature of restorative justice. Restorative justice asks us to understand harm as a break in relationship that creates obligations for the person harmed, the person who caused harm, and the community. Community is theorized to play a key role in working towards reintegration and social change, both goals of restorative justice. Yet in practice, community is often misused or underused in ways that weaken these goals. Practitioners are observing an increase in cancel culture actions by groups that claim affinity with restorative and transformative justice. However, by weaponizing the concept of community accountability, these groups reproduce the carceral logics that restorative and transformative justice resist. At the same time, when restorative justice practices minimize the role of community, they fail to address the broader social conditions that contribute to harm. This Article concludes by calling for a more intentional and deliberate approach to building the restorative justice community: one that is intentionally developed, critically examined, and regularly re-evaluated.
Recommended Citation
Aparna Polavarapu,
When We Don’t Get Community Right in Restorative Justice Spaces: Cancel Culture and Failure to Transform,
105 Neb. L. Rev. 83
(2026).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol105/iss1/6