A challenge

from the entry on Restore:

I’m listening this morning to the slew of financial statistics–housing starts, unemployment rate, bank closings, those without health care, bankruptcies, houses in foreclosure….

It seems to me that restorative justice needs to come up with an index of its own:  one that marks the measure of social justice.  Are we moving closer or further away from our goal of less reliance on prisons, improving social relationships in our communities, looking at how well or how poorly alternatives to incarceration are funded?  What is the ratio between expenditures on prisons vs. what we spend on schools?  What is the ratio of crime to poverty?  Number of dispute resolution programs to police officers?

Nov 10, 2009 Limitations, Theory, Tool, Potential, Evaluation

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Making amends: restorative youth justice in Northern Ireland

On 29 October 2009, the Prison Reform Trust published a report on the development and effectiveness of Northern Ireland's Youth Conference Service. 

 From the executive summary of Making amends: restorative justice in Northern Ireland:

This report examines recent youth justice reform in Northern Ireland, focussing particularly on the operation and outcomes of the Youth Conference Service, which is part of the Youth Justice Agency of Northern Ireland.

Many of the youth justice reforms in Northern Ireland derive from the Criminal Justice Review of 2000. This led to the youth justice system adopting a statutory aim of protecting the public by preventing offending and reoffending by children, to the introduction of new community sentences and to the setting up of the Youth Conferencing Service.

The service, which takes a restorative justice approach to tackling offending by young people, was established in 2003. Its primary aims are to reduce levels of reoffending and to meet the needs of victims of crime, and early research evidence indicates that it is enjoying some success in these terms. The introduction of youth conferencing appears, moreover, to have contributed to an overall decline in the use of custody for young offenders in Northern Ireland.

Nov 03, 2009 Juvenile, Country:Northern Ireland, Region: Europe, Report, Evaluation

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