Writing from the settler-colonial context of Aotearoa/New Zealand, this paper grapples with the theoretical tensions between formal and informal responses to harm in a society without prisons. Although often-praised as a Māori-led or inspired response to harm, restorative justice has fundamentally failed to provide a meaningful alternative to imprisonment. As Māori scholars have argued, restorative justice has not delivered Māori self-determination, as guaranteed under Te Tiriti o Waitangi and international law. Despite these failures, this paper interrogates what insights can be gained from the limitations and promises of restorative justice for a justice system without prisons. It proposes a fundamental reconceptualisation of restorative justice under the title ‘abolitionist justice’. It advances a conception of the state, formal and informal justice that responds to profound critiques of each, without doing away with either component. In this reconceptualisation of restorative justice for abolitionist purposes, it envisions a role for the state, and formal systems of justice, in underpinning human rights and in redistribution of power and resources. This abolitionist justice approach proposes an integrated system of formal and informal alternatives to prison in which there is no place for incarceration.