The present work aims to analyze the potential of restorative justice in the Brazilian legal system. Assuming that the criminal system is in crisis of legitimacy, due to the focus on maintaining the punitive-repressive bias and the discourse of this paradigm. In this sense, it is questioned whether the restorative proposal can represent a more humanizing and apt path to conflict resolution in the criminal field. Therefore, we initially sought to understand the crisis of the penal system, and later, to unveil the origins of the restorative paradigm, as an international movement, comparing it at the opportunity, with the retributive paradigm. It was also sought to analyze the emergence of restorative justice in the Brazilian legal system, establishing an overview of its application, so that the conditions of its development were evidenced. Finally, it was demonstrated through research made possible by the National Council of Justice, the particularities of the pioneering projects of Restorative Justice, as well as, the state of the art of the restorative movement in the judicial system, with its potentialities and challenges in the construction of the restorative Brazilianity, which demonstrates a democratic deficit linked to a Brazilian legal culture of expansionism of the penal control network.