What is peacemaking criminology?
Harold Pepinsky and Richard Quinney's peacemaking criminology (1991) holds that crime and punishment are two forms of the same violence, and that answering harm with more suffering only multiplies it. It proposes mediation, reconciliation and restorative justice as alternatives to the “war on crime”.
We call criminal policy the “war on crime”, and the metaphor is not innocent: war is waged with violence, and it produces more violence. Peacemaking criminology starts from a simple and radical intuition: crime and punishment are not opposites but two forms of the same thing, the suffering inflicted on a human being, and answering violence with more violence (that of the State, of revenge, of prison) only feeds the cycle it claims to fight.
Peacemaking criminology at a glance
- Authors
- Harold Pepinsky · Richard Quinney
- Year / era
- 1990s (founding work, 1991)
- Family
- Critical · Humanist
- Idea
- Crime and punishment are two forms of the same violence; answering harm with more harm only perpetuates the cycle
Harm → violent response (revenge or punishment) → new grievance → more harm (cycle)// OriginMaking peace with crime
Peacemaking criminology was formulated in the nineties by Harold Pepinsky and Richard Quinney, drawing on three sources: the religious and humanist traditions of non-violence (from Christian pacifism to Buddhism), feminist thought on care, and the critique of the penal system. Its central thesis defies all punitive common sense: violence cannot end violence. A system that answers harm by causing more harm (imprisoning, humiliating, isolating, executing) repairs nothing; it only redistributes suffering and perpetuates the chain.
Against the logic of war, peacemaking criminology proposes that of repair: restorative justice, mediation, reintegration, active compassion. The aim is not to “do nothing” in the face of harm, but to respond in a way that breaks the cycle instead of reinforcing it: repairing the victim, holding the offender accountable without destroying them, and returning both to the community.
Quinney’s thesis
For Quinney, crime is a form of suffering, and only peace, not more punishment, can bring it to an end.
The cycle of violence
The heart of the theory is the cycle of violence: every violent act generates a grievance that demands a response, and that response, whether private revenge or state punishment, generates a new grievance, in an endless spiral. Violence has no final winners, so the only way to escape the cycle is to interrupt it with an act that does not return the harm: forgiveness, repair, mediation. Someone has to stop hitting first.
The cycle of violence and how to break it
- 1Initial harmA violent act generates a grievance that demands a response
- 2Punitive responseSociety answers with more harm: private revenge or state punishment (prison, humiliation, execution)
- 3New grievancePunishment does not repair: it redistributes suffering and sows resentment. Today's victim is tomorrow's perpetrator
- 4SpiralThe cycle feeds itself with no final winners: violence does not end itself
- 5InterruptionSomeone stops returning the blow: forgiveness, repair, mediation, the only thing that breaks the chain
Punitive culture calls that gesture weakness; the theory considers it the only thing that is truly strong.
// In fictionLinks in the chain: revenge, punishment, nihilism, tyranny
Fiction loves revenge, and that is why it illustrates the cycle so well. Bill presides over a whole story built on the cycle: he orders the massacre of the Bride, she devotes her life to killing them one by one, and each death breeds the next; the film itself warns that “revenge is never a straight line, it is a forest” in which it is easy to get lost. Woo-jin takes it to its most desolate extreme: he devotes fifteen years and a fortune to a revenge so perfect that it destroys his enemy and himself. In the cycle there are no victors, only broken survivors.
Javert embodies punitive justice turned into violence: an upright policeman whose relentless pursuit of Valjean, a man who served his sentence for stealing bread, reveals that law without mercy is revenge in uniform; when he finally receives compassion (Valjean spares his life), his rigid world collapses, unable to conceive of a justice that is not punishment. el Comediante is the nihilism of war: a man who has seen so much “legitimate” violence that he concludes everything is a cruel joke, and responds with more brutality. And Commodus is the tyrant whose cruelty sows the very revolt that destroys him: violence from above breeding violence from below.
Links in the cycle of violence: revenge, punitive justice, nihilism and tyranny. Tap to open their case file.
// The alternativeThe justice that repairs instead of punishing
Peacemaking criminology does not stop at critique: it proposes restorative justice, already at work in many countries. Instead of a trial that pits the State against the accused, it proposes an encounter between the one who caused the harm, the one who suffered it and the community, in order to repair: acknowledge the harm, take responsibility, make restitution where possible, and reintegrate. In many contexts it reduces reoffending and leaves victims more satisfied than the ordinary criminal process. It connects directly with Braithwaite's reintegrative shaming: shaming the act without destroying the person. Punitive justice looks to the past; restorative justice, to the future: fewer victims tomorrow.
// The crackNeither naivety, nor peace as impunity
The theory has two edges. The first is the accusation of naivety: repair with a serial killer, mediation with an abuser? Peacemaking criminology answers that it does not propose abolishing all response to harm, since the community must protect itself from some aggressors, but changing the dominant logic: that punishment, when inevitable, be neither revenge nor spectacle, and that repair be the norm wherever it can work (most offences, which are not atrocious crimes).
The second edge is more delicate: peace misunderstood can become impunity or pressure on the victim to “forgive”. Restorative justice is only just if the victim participates freely and the offender genuinely takes responsibility; forcing reconciliation is another form of violence. Nor does understanding the cycle excuse those who wield it: Bill, Woo-jin and the Comedian are responsible for what they do, and the theory only points out that answering them with more violence will not close the wound they opened.
From critique to restorative justice
Peacemaking criminology gave the critical tradition, in which Quinney was already a major figure, a constructive turn: not only to denounce the penal system, but to propose another logic. Its greatest legacy is practical: it served as a framework for the worldwide expansion of restorative justice, which today operates in the courts of dozens of countries and draws on Nils Christie's famous thesis that conflict was “stolen” from its protagonists by the State.
- 1977Christie publishes “Conflicts as Property”: the penal system expropriates conflict from victim and offender.
- 1989Braithwaite formulates reintegrative shaming: shaming the act without destroying the person.
- 1991Pepinsky and Quinney edit Criminology as Peacemaking: the current is formally born.
- 2002Braithwaite systematizes restorative justice, already at work in multiple countries.
// Why it mattersStop feeding the fire
Peacemaking criminology questions the deepest and least examined reflex of our societies: that harm is answered with harm, and that the more punishment, the more justice. The countries that imprison the most are not the safest, and harsher penalties rarely deter. If the “war on crime” worked, decades of war would have brought peace; they brought full prisons and broken communities. The theory proposes to stop feeding the fire: repair where today we punish, mediate where today we confront, reintegrate where today we exclude.
Lights and shadows
- Questions a barely examined social reflex, answering harm with harm, and backs it up with data on imprisonment.
- It gave a framework to restorative justice, which in many contexts reduces reoffending and leaves victims more satisfied.
- Restores the victim to centre stage, whom the ordinary criminal process usually leaves out.
- Offers a humanist and coherent response: reintegrate instead of exclude, hold accountable without destroying.
- Accusation of naivety: there are atrocious aggressors (serial killers, repeat abusers) from whom the community must protect itself, not mediate.
- Misunderstood “peace” can become impunity or pressure on the victim to “forgive”.
- Its principles are more a moral philosophy than an operational programme: they are hard to translate into criminal policy for serious crime.
- It depends on demanding conditions (free participation, an offender who takes responsibility) that are not always met.
Three key takeaways
- Peacemaking criminology (Pepinsky, Quinney) holds that crime and punishment are two forms of the same violence: the "war on crime" and revenge only feed the cycle they claim to fight.
- The alternative is restorative justice: repair instead of punish, shame the act without destroying the person, look to the future rather than the past.
- Its limits: it can sound naive before atrocious crimes, and it only works if the victim participates freely.
Sources · further reading
- Pepinsky, H. E. & Quinney, R. (eds.) (1991). Criminology as Peacemaking. Indiana University Press.
- Braithwaite, J. (2002). Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulation. Oxford University Press.
- Sullivan, D. & Tifft, L. (2001). Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Everyday Lives. Willow Tree Press.
- Christie, N. (1977). “Conflicts as Property”. British Journal of Criminology, 17(1).
// Test the theoryWhich of these villains does KRIMINIS analyse with Peacemaking criminology?
Theory questionsFrequently asked questions
What is peacemaking criminology?
Harold Pepinsky and Richard Quinney's peacemaking criminology (1991) holds that crime and punishment are two forms of the same violence, and that answering harm with more suffering only multiplies it. It proposes mediation, reconciliation and restorative justice as alternatives to the “war on crime”.
Who formulated peacemaking criminology, and when?
Harold Pepinsky and Richard Quinney, who in 1991 edited the volume "Criminology as Peacemaking" (Indiana University Press), regarded as the formal birth of the current. They drew on religious and humanist traditions of non-violence, on feminist ethics of care and on the critique of the penal system, with forerunners such as Nils Christie's 1977 article "Conflicts as Property".
Is peacemaking criminology still relevant, and what is its main criticism?
It is very influential, since it is the foundation of restorative justice. The most common criticism is naivety: mediation with an abuser or a serial killer? The current replies that it does not seek to abolish every response to harm, only to change the dominant logic. The other risk is that peace, badly understood, turns into impunity or into pressure on the victim to forgive.
How is peacemaking criminology related to restorative justice?
Peacemaking criminology is its theoretical foundation. Christie (1977) argued that the penal system expropriates the conflict from victim and offender; Braithwaite proposed reintegrative shaming in 1989 and systematised restorative justice in 2002, by then applied in many countries. According to the current itself, it is only just when the victim takes part freely and the offender truly accepts responsibility.