Description
Abstract
There is now enough evidence to believe that the restorative justice ethos and its practices can offer complementary routes to preventing and controlling violence. However, this is not the case when it comes to hate violence as evaluations of restorative justice practices remain scant. This paper aims to help minimise this gap in the literature by presenting the evaluation findings of a small-scale project that was carried out using restorative justice circles with 23 young people who had been affected by hate violence. Moreover, the project worked with 8 professionals supporting these young people through restorative justice training. It was carried out over 12 months in West Yorkshire (Bradford), UK in 2018. The project and this evaluation were funded by the Home Office. Key results include young people became aware of hate crimes and restorative approaches reporting higher levels of satisfaction with circles vs the criminal justice experience. Practitioners supporting them reported becoming skilled in practising restorative justice approaches and through this change feeling more confident in helping to develop a more effective system for the police to deal with out of court disposal cases. The evaluation also suggested a small increased in local public awareness of hate crime and restorative justice approaches.
