Restorative Justice and Social Reintegration: Procedural and Structural Challenges

The purpose of this article is to identify and examine the main structural and procedural challenges of social reintegration for adolescents in Mexico, as well as to analyze the possible transformation of the current justice system for adolescents (which is positivist, punitive and sustained in penitentiary practices that violate human rights), into a justice system that heals and restores social and institutional omissions, and also the conditions of exclusion and marginalization that historically have characterized adolescents in conflict with the law. For such purposes, the ethnographic method is used, through interviews and focus groups with organizations of civil society. The theoretical framework is based on critical theory, fundamentally criminological. It is concluded that, although restorative justice has been incorporated declaratively into penitentiary mechanisms, the positivist nucleus of the penal system still produces and allows violations of human rights, even with the work developed by civil associations focused on the fundamental dimension of restorative justice: the social bond between the youth and the community.