By keeping the criminal in the community and restarting the cycle of reciprocity through restorative justice, the hope is that these offenders will recapture their place as members of society and not drift into ever-deeper alienation and estrangement. Drawing both on her research and on her direct experience as a member of a Restorative Board, she expressed both interest and skepticism. Although drawn to the restorative process, she felt that insufficient attention was being paid to the working of the Boards, and that the relatively short period of interaction between the offender and the Board might be insufficient for the purpose of establishing reciprocity. She also cautioned that the theory needs to be confirmed or corrected through a systematic evaluation of program results. The third segment of the symposium focused on the role of gender in crimes of violence.
Males are vastly more likely to be violent criminals than females.
Some investigators have argued that this propensity is entirely a social construct. On the other hand, the gender difference is significant biologically and has behavioral consequences in other species. This panel explored the possibility of a biological basis for behavior disparity in humans. She introduced the areas of the brain connected with emotional response and pointed out regions in which anatomical differences between men and women have been suggested. Although there appear to be some typical differences in female and male brains, and structural variations could well be linked to variations in behavioral proclivity, the degree to which these differences have significant behavioral consequences is still a subject of debate.