Restorative justice represents a profound form of folly

 Restorative justice represents a profound form of folly because it fundamentally evades the objective reality of justice, which demands that individuals receive precisely what they deserve based on their actions, without subordinating principles to emotional appeals for reconciliation or communal harmony [1][3]. 

By prioritizing the "restoration" of relationships between victims and offenders through mediated dialogues and forgiveness, this approach inverts the proper hierarchy of values, placing subjective feelings of empathy and compassion above the rational evaluation of facts and the enforcement of individual rights, thereby undermining the victim's right to retribution and the criminal's accountability to objective law [2][4].

 Such a system implicitly endorses altruism, requiring the victim to sacrifice their pursuit of justice for the offender's supposed rehabilitation or the group's emotional equilibrium, which is a rejection of rational self-interest and an embrace of collectivism over individualism [5].

 In essence, restorative justice evades the metaphysically given fact that actions have consequences rooted in identity and causality, treating crime not as an initiation of force deserving punishment, but as a malleable social construct to be "healed" through wishful thinking, which denies reason's primacy and invites further irrationality in society [6][3]. 

This folly stems from emotionalism—such as envy of the achiever or hatred of the good—masquerading as benevolence, ultimately eroding the foundations of a rational, rights-based civilization where justice serves as the guardian of freedom, not a tool for mercy-driven evasion [4][2].

Sources

1 Understanding Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff. Edited by Michael S. Berliner

2 Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand

3 the Romantic Manifesto by Ayn Rand

4 Ayn Rand Lexicon by Harry Binswanger

5 the Voice of Reason by Ayn Rand, with additional essays by Leonard Peikoff

6 For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand

in addition

Restorative justice further exemplifies folly by subordinating the objective identification of facts—such as the initiation of physical force in a crime—to a collectivist process that demands emotional reconciliation, thereby evading the axiomatic need for individual accountability and rational judgment [1][3]. 

This approach treats justice not as an absolute derived from reality and reason, where actions' identities dictate consequences, but as a subjective negotiation influenced by the offender's remorse or the community's feelings, which denies the primacy of existence and invites evasion of metaphysical givens like causality [6]. 

In practice, it promotes altruism by compelling victims to forgo rightful retribution for the sake of "healing" the perpetrator, inverting rational self-interest and fostering dependency rather than independence, as true justice requires evaluating men objectively and granting them precisely what their actions merit without mercy's distortion [5][2].

 Such a system undermines limited government by blurring the lines between rights protection and statist intervention, where emotionalism—rooted in ideas like resentment against achievement or hatred of the good—masquerades as compassion, ultimately eroding the foundations of a capitalist society built on individual rights and objective law [4]. 

By prioritizing mediated dialogues over principled enforcement, restorative justice rejects reason as man's means of survival, replacing it with mysticism and subjectivism that treat emotions as guides to action, contrary to the virtue of justice which demands loyalty to rational principles above all [3][1]. 

This evasion perpetuates irrationality, as it fails to recognize that virtue, including justice, is practical and must serve the individual's life as an end in itself, not sacrifice it to collective whims or wishful thinking about human reform without volitional change [2][6]. 

Ultimately, embracing restorative justice invites a broader cultural folly, where statism gains ground over individualism, and emotional appeals supplant the objective pursuit of values like productiveness and pride, leading to a society mired in parasitism rather than rational achievement [4][5].

Sources

1 Understanding Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff. Edited by Michael S. Berliner

2 The Objectivist by Ayn Rand

3 The DIM Hypothesis by Leonard Peikoff

4 Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand

5 Objectivism: the Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff

6 The Ayn Rand Letter by Ayn