Restitution as a social practice can simultaneously have a punitive effect and add to a person’s criminal justice debt load, while maintaining a reparative and therefore restorative component. We use principles of restorative justice to assess restitution as a concept and a practice, drawing on data from a survey experiment administered to a nationally representative sample (n = 433). We find that the common and strongly preferred conception of restitution is “direct,” entailing a convicted person compensating a victim for quantifiable loss. Evidence from Victim Compensation Funds (VCFs) in all 50 states demonstrate the widespread use of “indirect” restitution, through which funds from various sources are distributed to qualifying victims. Broader trends in criminal justice policy related to the centering of the victim and a managerial approach to punishment help explain our findings. We conclude that the divergence between common conception and widespread practice indicates a need for a revised notion of restitution.

中文翻译：

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不恢复原状？探索恢复原状的认知与实施之间的差距

恢复原状作为一种社会实践可以同时产生惩罚效果并增加一个人的刑事司法债务负担，同时保持补偿性和恢复性成分。我们使用恢复性司法原则来评估作为概念和实践的恢复原状，利用对具有全国代表性的样本（n = 433）进行的调查实验的数据。我们发现，普遍且强烈推荐的归还概念是“直接”的，要求被定罪的人赔偿受害者的可量化损失。来自所有 50 个州的受害者赔偿基金 (VCF) 的证据表明，“间接”赔偿的广泛使用，通过这种方式将来自各种来源的资金分配给符合条件的受害者。与以受害者为中心和惩罚的管理方法相关的刑事司法政策的更广泛趋势有助于解释我们的发现。我们得出的结论是，普遍概念和广泛实践之间的分歧表明需要修改恢复原状的概念。