Restorative Justice​

Restorative Justice, Restorative Practice, Restorative Approaches is becoming ever more visible across the country as more and more local authorities and more broadly, the Criminal Justice System as a whole, tap into its benefits. Training courses abound, a professional body is established and there is now accreditation for practitioners of this emerging profession.

So where has it come from

The truth is, it really isn’t very new at all and is extremely well tried and tested. Way back as far as c2060 BC in Sumer there was the requirement of restitution for violent offences. History is peppered with examples of restorative practice across the ages, within many diverse societies. Perhaps the most notable of which being the Maori tribe of New Zealand who established a well-developed system of restorative justice way before European contact.

Retributive justice began to replace restorative justice following the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066 AD. It was around this time that William the Conqueror’s son Henry 1st began to speak of offences as being against the ‘king’s peace’. So that by the end of the 11th century, crime was no longer perceived as being against an individual, but rather it was seen as an offence against the state: the complete opposite to restorative justice and the reason the victim became significantly less of a player to the ‘justice’ process whilst remaining the most affected.

The modern era

Restorative justice began to take its present shape in the 1970s. It was in 1974 in Elima, Ontario that two young offenders vandalised 22 properties. A prison support worker asked the judge in the case for permission to arrange for the offenders to meet the victims in order that reparation could be made. News of the success of this quickly spread and victim offender programmes began to spring up in Canada, particularly within the Mennonite population - a people particularly focussed on applying their Christian faith as well as their peace perspective on the harsh world around them. This subsequently spread to the United States and to Europe.

To bring things bang up to date, in 2012 the Ministry of Justice produced a paper entitled the ‘Restorative Justice Action Plan for the Criminal Justice System'. This firmly establishes the place restorative justice is to have in our criminal justice sector and highlights the development planned to embed the approach.