Introduction: The Utah Restorative Justice Conference

Restorative justice proves to be a fascinating topic and a provocative foil for challenging contemporary crime and punishment in the United States. The Utah Restorative Justice Conference may be the first of its kind in American legal academe, providing a much-needed forum to hash out the arguments for and against restorativism vis-d-vis traditional approaches to the criminal process. As such, the Symposium hopes to inspire further debate on restorative justice, its principles, and its practices. Restorativism certainly has both charms and warts, but given the current state of affairs in criminal courts and correctional facilities across the nation, the potential promise of restorative justice seems well worth exploring.