For informal justice to be restorative justice, it has to be about restorin
g victims, restoring offenders, and restoring communities as a result of pa
rticipation of a plurality of stakeholders. This means that victim-offender
mediation, healing circles, family group conferences, restorative probatio
n, reparation boards on the Vermont model, whole school antibullying progra
ms, Chinese Bang Jiao programs, and exit conferences following Western busi
ness regulatory inspections can at times all be restorative justice. Sets o
f both optimistic propositions and pessimistic claims can be made about res
torative justice by contemplating the global diversity of its practice. Exa
mination of both the optimistic and the pessimistic propositions sheds ligh
t on prospects for restorative justice. Regulatory theory (a responsive reg
ulatory pyramid) may be more useful for preventing crime in a normatively a
cceptable way than existing criminal law jurisprudence and explanatory theo
ry. Evidence-based reform must move toward a more productive checking of re
storative justice by liberal legalism, and vice verse.