Beyond Retributive and Restorative Justice: In Search of Mercy with Jordan's Bedouin

Popular debates about criminal justice reform often pose restorative justice as a humane (if utopian) alternative to retributive justice. Drawing on extensive research with Jordan’s Bedouin, I offer an unvarnished account of an actually existing system of restorative justice that also includes violent and punitive elements. While acknowledging how the system can fail women, the poor and the poorly-connected, I highlight how Bedouin justice also cultivates mercy as a social good, transforming enmity into forgiveness (if not friendship) and encouraging perpetrators to materially compensate victims. I conclude by considering what lessons those seeking alternatives to mass incarceration might draw from the Jordanian case.