Restorative justice is a complex and multi-faceted concept, the introduction of which does not happen in a socio-political and economic vacuum. Every society engages with restorative justice in its own distinctive way as it is the society – lay people – that is always on the receiving end of restorative solutions. In this article I draw on my doctoral research that explored qualitatively how a small number of Polish  people understand punishment and  justice, and  how  their  narratives inform the viability of restorative approaches to justice in Poland. In the case of Poland, it seems that the exceptionally limited interest in mediation and paucity of anticipated outcomes of victim-offender mediation is the  problem. In order to explore the viability of restorative justice in the Polish context, one must therefore look beyond the legal basis and formal logistics which have been already in place for many years. I propose to consider a macro-sociological perspective, and how lay people’s understandings of punishment and justice should  be seen as an avenue by which to explore certain preconditions for the viability of restorative justice. The aim of this paper is to argue that the viability of restorative justice should be approached as a process that is influenced by broader socio-economic, political and even linguistic factors.