Summary
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In May 2000, the Youth Justice Board in England initiated a plan to test, in two schools in Lambeth, restorative justice approaches in response to robbery and bullying in school settings. This was part of the Board’s overall exploration of interventions that might reduce youth crime. The project was devised in partnership with the Metropolitan Police in Lambeth. To evaluate the project, the Youth Justice Board engaged Partners in Evaluation and the Oxford Centre for Criminological Research. The evaluation, reported in this document, reviewed a number of key areas: levels of victimization, bullying, and robbery in the two schools; means for introducing restorative justice approaches in the schools; satisfaction of participants (victims and offenders) in the schools’ restorative justice conferences; short-term and long-term effects of the conferences on participants; and the larger effects of conferences, if any, on the nature and frequency of acts of victimization in the two schools. This paper presents research findings and analysis in these key areas, as well as a number of recommendations to enhance the use of restorative justice conferences in school settings. Additionally, several appendices provide further information on the study methodology, data-gathering, and research instruments.
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