Another important component of restorative justice is community service, which is used as a means of repairing damage to the community. Court-ordered community service requires an offender to perform a specific number of hours of free work for a charitable agency, nonprofit organization, or governmental agency, and it can be ordered as a condition of probation or as an alternative to incarceration. Generally, a nonviolent offender is assigned to community service, and careful screening must occur to ensure that the offender is appropriate for the site—and vice versa—and to ensure public safety.

The benefits of community service are very similar to those of restitution. It can help to change an offender’s values. For many, successful completion of a community service court order represents the first time they have done something, over an extended period of time, that contributed to society in a positive way. While community service does not address the needs of a specific victim, it gives offenders the opportunity to repay the community at large. In addition, the necessary monitoring and supervision associated with community service is often less expensive than incarceration.

Victim-offender reconciliation

Victim-offender reconciliation is another important part of restorative justice. The victim and the offender discuss the crime and the harm it caused. Often, with the aid of a specially trained mediator, the victim and the offender develop a course of action that allows the offender to right the wrong caused by the crime. While victim-offender reconciliation is most common to cases involving nonviolent crime, it has been and can be used successfully in cases of serious and violent crime, provided that adequate screening and preparation of the victim and offender occur.

Victims value reconciliation meetings because they provide a forum for confronting the offender in a structured and monitored way to detail the impact that the crime had on their lives. In addition, many victims have unanswered questions that were not addressed by the court process. They can put these questions directly to the offender. Victims report that reconciliation meetings were helpful in allowing them to gain closure. They report that the meetings “humanize” the criminal justice system, and they experience a reduced fear of revictimization. Offenders also often report that the reconciliation meeting was helpful. Offenders who meet their victims are less likely to commit similar criminal acts than offenders who do not.