Restorative Justice: Towards its integration into the Cuban Criminal Justice System

Abstract

Restorative justice proposes a fundamental change in criminal law by replacing punishment with the repair of harm, dialogue between the parties, and the social reintegration of the offender. Its foundations rest upon the ethics of care, communitarianism, and critical criminology, and its guiding principles are voluntariness, comprehensive reparation, and reintegration. In Cuba, the 2019 Constitution and Decree Law 69 of 2023, on mediation, create a favorable normative framework for the incipient incorporation of this model. However, significant obstacles persist: a predominantly punitive legal culture, the lack of specialized training for legal practitioners and mediators, and limited social knowledge about the restorative approach. The main contribution of this research lies in identifying, within the Cuban context, the structural, educational, and cultural barriers that hinder the implementation of restorative justice, systematize them and propose concrete strategies to overcome them. It is concluded that the fundamental challenge is not only normative but also cultural and educational, so strengthening institutional commitment is essential to consolidate a more humane, participatory, and reparative justice in the own criminal system.