Thirdly, guidelines and rules could be developed to limit the likelihood of unduly harsh sanctions being imposed. The courts could strike down agreements that are overly oppressive. A traditional system values proportionate outcomes of antiseptic formal processes at the expense of proactively involving the victim and the offender. In other words, the two systems of justice operate on two fundamentally different foundations, which ultimately shape their different conceptions of fairness. This in turn affects the relative importance each gives to proportionality.
Proportionality is how retributive justice satisfies notions of fairness.
The debate over proportionality becomes a debate over which paradigm of justice, and all of its implications, one subscribes to and seeks to achieve. Resolution of the conflict would be the primary aim, limited only by a compelling, overriding public safety reason for incapacitation. The amount of a particular sanction would be based on the nature and gravity of offense and harm, paid in one of several equivalent units of a common currency. Retributivists anchor the seriousness of both the crime and punishment to the extent to which each impedes the standard of living of the typical person. Participants in a restorative process would be provided with a range of alternative sanctions for the typical offense involved, with opportunity to alter the sanction within this range to take account of the particular circumstances surrounding the commission of the offense.