EUKN - United Kingdom - Implementing restorative justice schemes (Crime Reduction Programme)

Implementing restorative justice schemes (Crime Reduction Programme)

Introduction

Provides a record of the processes of development and setting up of three restorative justice schemes funded by the Home Office: CONNECT, Justice Research Consortium, and REMEDI.

Description

This report

reviews the development of three restorative justice schemes;
describes the aims and content of the schemes, providing a record of the initiation and implementation stages of the projects;
provides a definition of restorative justice and explains the locations and operations of each of the schemes;
outlines the evaluation methods, highlighting key difficulties and developments; and
identifies three emerging issues from the evaluation: achieving referrals, the relationship between restorative justice and criminal justice, and the dominance of criminal justice.

Background information

In 2001, the Home Office decided to fund three schemes to develop restorative justice under the Crime Reduction Programme. The Programme, which was launched in 1999, is intended to explore in a systematic way the potential of a variety of approaches to reducing crime. One of these is restorative justice. As a first stage, the Home Office commissioned a study of some existing schemes which provided very useful pointers to the development of restorative justice, but which found that existing schemes were often small-scale, struggling to find sufficient referrals, and primarily dealt with younger offenders. The three new, or expanded, schemes were started to look at the potential for restorative justice with adult offenders who have committed a range of offences.

Methodology

This action research evaluation includes:

working with the schemes to develop databases of cases to ensure basic data is available on all offenders and victims;
talking to those involved in the schemes from very early on with more formal interviews with scheme personnel and key agencies taking place in summer 2002;
attending steering group meetings, training sessions and workers’ meetings;
observing direct meetings between victims and offender and conferences, with 102 JRC conferences having been attended during the period of the report;
undertaking pre-mediation or pre-conference interviews or using questionnaires for victims and offenders for some schemes; and
undertaking post-restorative justice and control group interviews with offenders and victims.

Conclusions

Three key issues have emerged from the evaluation of the setting up of the schemes:

achieving referrals. This has been a difficulty for all three schemes. All of them have found that a number of elements (described in the report) are important in achieving and maintaining case flow;
the relationship between restorative justice and criminal justice. The schemes have shown that restorative justice within the criminal justice process can work to aid a key criminal justice decision;
the dominance of criminal justice. It is clear that restorative justice is operating within the criminal justice culture. Consequently all three schemes have needed to negotiate and operate within a framework of procedures, precautions and values developed for criminal justice.

Contact info

Home Office, Research, Development and Statistics Directorate
Phone: +44 207 273 2084
public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Publication date

01/01/2004

Project finished

Researcher

Joanna Shapland et al, Institute for the Study of the Legal Profession, University of Sheffield

Article info
ISBN: 1844733130

Links

Home Office Institute for the Study of the Legal Profession, University of Sheffield

Implementing restorative justice schemes (Crime Reduction Programme): a report on the first year (PDF, Eng, 565KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Security & crime prevention > Tackling crime

Keywords

Working with offenders