Misunderstanding The Text

Martin & Rose (2007: 88):

Finally Tutu rests his case on the contrast between retributive and restorative justice. Interestingly he argues that both types treat the converse roles of victim and perpetrator in some ways similarly. Retributive justice gives little consideration to either, whereas restorative justice classifies both as people:

Further, retributive justice - in which an impersonal state hands down punishment with little consideration for victims and hardly any for the perpetrator - is not the only form of justice. I contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which is characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment but, in the spirit of ubuntu, the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships. This kind of justice seeks to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he or she has injured by his or her offence. This is a far more personal approach, which sees the offence as something that has happened to people and whose consequence is a rupture in relationships.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, retributive justice and restorative justice are nominal groups, not lexical items, and Tutu's argument is made by the grammar, not by the relation between the lexical items retributive and restorative.

[2] This misunderstands the text.  The two types of justice treat the victim and perpetrator in significantly different ways:

retributive justice … hands down punishment with little consideration for victims and hardly any for the perpetrator

whereas

restorative justice … seeks to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator …