“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance” －Confucius (知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也。)
Pardon the pun, your understanding of social justice is uneducated to the best and autistic to the worst. In a democratic society, social justice is not attained through what you claimed "self-improvement and/or self correction", it is attained through punishment, pure and simple. Democracy is contrived upon contractuality, not virture. John Nash's prisoner's dilemma theory says it all. In the democratic society, the social system is designed to treat every individual as a runaway horse whose reins need to be pulled hard and suddenly to inflict pain when it is galloping out of boundary. Criminal justice system in the US and in almost all societies alike are not designed to "reform" the criminals but to detain and deter the criminals, no more and no less.
Self-improvement and self-correction, on the other hand, are the essence of confucianism which advocates that the goodness of self can be cultivated and harvested for the benefit of the society as a whole. Social justice in a confucian society is contrive upon shame and self-conciousness.
