I absolutely agree that there is much benefit in restorative justice, alternative approaches, and some of the community-based sentencing alternatives. Certainly the mandatory minimum penalties, where your first penalty will be a fine, is probably an approach which does not lend itself to that educative, restorative milieu, which works very well, particularly with young people or with others who may have acted spontaneously and not really thought about the consequences of their behaviour.
I think, in many cases, if you can invite these people together with the people who were hurt by their actions, it is a much more constructive learning process and resolution of the issue than simply imposing the penalty. Sometimes the process by which you get to the penalty is actually more important, in terms of restoring social order and preventing such behaviour from happening in the future.