It is a new innovation in the criminal justice system. It is a form of restorative justice - restoring the dominion of the victim, shame the offender (different from stigma) and re-integrate them into the community. The system is called republican - recognises we are individuals but are apart of the community and are participants of that community.
For good information about it, look out for work by John Braithwaite and for a critique, Warner writes some good articles.
The problems with it are:
-Sentences may not be proportionate
-Assumes parties have equal bargaining power
-Often requires defendant to plead guilty and NOT challenge evidence (a way of having frivalous cases go ahead).
