Originally trained as a social worker, Mike served as a probation officer. Frustrated with the limited focus on punishment and to a far lesser extent on rehabilitation, Mike was keen to explore other options.  

As South Africa began to undergo transformation at many levels after 1994, Mike chaired the Pilot Project on Family Group Conferencing of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Young People at Risk in 1996-1997 that tested the New Zealand model in Pretoria. This exposure to restorative justice led him to found the Restorative Justice Centre (RJC) together with Nigel Branken in 1998. This non-profit organization promotes restorative justice and demonstrates its application in service delivery. Services offered by the RJC include:

• victim offender conferencing, mainly with referrals from the courts at a pre-trial level. More than half these cases involve domestic violence.
• pre-trial and pre-sentence reports to courts
• assessment of children in trouble with the law at 2 courts in the Tshwane area
• life skills program using drama as a medium
• an intermediary service assisting child victims to testify in court
• general support service to victims
• awareness raising and training for community members and criminal justice personnel.

Mike became executive director of the RJC in 2001. Currently, the organization employs 30 staff members. Mike also chairs the Restorative Justice Initiative Southern Africa, a network of civil society organizations and individuals committed to restorative justice and to building the capacity of civil society in this field. In 2006 he was selected as an Ashoka Fellow, an international fellowship of leading social entrepreneurs.
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Important Idea

We need to make a clear distinction between restorative justice as a mindset/philosophy, restorative justice processes (such as conferencing) and restorative justice programs (such as support for victims and life skills for offenders). All three categories are essential. The use of restorative justice as a mindset/philosophy becomes clear when criminal justice practitioners seek to make their work more restorative by integrating as many elements as possible on Howard Zehr’s continuum of “restorativeness”, such as addressing harms and causes and being victim oriented. In the same way, a variety of social service programs for victims and offenders contain elements and values of restorative justice without being “fully restorative” in the way we understand a restorative justice process.

--Mike Batley
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Leading Edge

Mike regularly writes and makes presentations on restorative justice to criminal justice professionals, seeking to integrate restorative justice into the country’s responses as it grapples with high crime levels.

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Reach Mike Batley at info@rjc.co.za

Bibliography