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The International Journal of Restorative Justice

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Issue 2, 2023 Expand all abstracts

Hongwei Zhang
Hongwei Zhang is Professor at the Juvenile & Family Law Research Center at Jinan University, China. Corresponding author: Hongwei Zhang at zhanghw@jnu.edu.cn.
Annual lecture

Restorative justice and access to justice: critical reflections of the global North-South divide

Keywords access to justice, global North-South divide, critical restorative justice, development
Authors Robert Peacock
AbstractAuthor's information

    Within the global North-South divide, there is little reason to assume that any interventions, development programmes or economic reforms can ever fully resolve the underlying causes of many victimological harms that affect the periphery or so-called ‘developing’ countries or regions of the world unless and until they lead to greater freedom, equality, inclusivity, dignity and access to justice. Within a critical decolonising framework, context, accountability, reparations and reconciliation would remain essential humanising components of restorative justice and variability across a range of historical, geo-political, cultural and social settings. To advance the intense humaneness of a universal personhood, a functional imperative would be to remain vigilant and critical of power relations and of the macro- and micro-links between interpersonal victimisation and victimisation in wider society. Localised workings of privilege and power and the hierarchies that inform these relationships remain connected on the colonial-postcolonial continuum to global patterns and consequences of structural subordination and institutional victimisation and require a broader engagement with access to justice, epistemic privilege and the narrow and restrictive aspirations of western law as procedural remedy.


Robert Peacock
Robert Peacock is a Full Professor at the Department of Criminology, University of the Free State, South Africa. The 2022 Annual Lecture for The International Journal of Restorative Justice was given on the occasion of the 17th International Symposium of the World Society of Victimology in San Sebastián, Spain, on 8 June 2022. Corresponding author: Robert Peacock at peacockr@ufs.ac.za.
Article

How can the victim-offender mediation process contribute to a lower risk of reoffending? A synthesis literature review

Keywords restorative justice, victim-offender mediation, recidivism, synthesis review
Authors Jiska Jonas-van Dijk, Sven Zebel, Jacques Claessen e.a.
AbstractAuthor's information

    Although it has been shown that participation in victim-offender mediation (VOM) can be associated with a lower risk of reoffending, it remains unclear how the VOM process may explain this relationship. Through a synthesis literature review, which included 53 articles, this article provides an overview of mechanisms in three phases of the VOM process that might contribute to a lower risk of reoffending. These are the preliminary phase (before the VOM encounter), the execution phase (VOM encounter) and the outcome phase (after VOM encounter). The findings of the review indicate that although a possible self-selection bias in the preliminary phase may (partly) account for the negative association with recidivism, multiple fundamental conditions and working mechanisms in the VOM process and encounter can help explain a psychological change within the offender and hence a lower recidivism risk. However, the review reveals remaining knowledge gaps regarding the contribution of VOM to reduced reoffending. To fill these gaps, we offer a number of recommendations for future research, such as examining how the fundamental conditions and working mechanisms of VOM interact with each other and produce a psychological change within the offender. This could help to find best practices that maximise the beneficial outcomes of VOM.


Jiska Jonas-van Dijk
Jiska Jonas-van Dijk is a PhD-student of the Psychology Conflict Risk and Safety Department at the Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Twente and at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology in the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, the Netherlands.

Sven Zebel
Sven Zebel is Associate Professor of Psychology Conflict Risk and Safety at the Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Twente and Endowed Professor of Mediation at the Faculty of Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Jacques Claessen
Jacques Claessen is Associate Professor of Criminal Law and Endowed Professor of Restorative Justice at the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, the Netherlands.

Hans Nelen
Hans Nelen is Professor of Criminology at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology in the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Corresponding author: Jiska Jonas-van Dijk at j.jonas-vandijk@utwente.nl. Funding: This research was funded by a Research Talent Grant (grant number 406.17.555) from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Article

Indigenous justice and restorative justice: exploring perceptions of convergence and divergence in British Columbia and Saskatchewan

Keywords Indigenous justice, restorative justice, convergence, divergence
Authors Muhammad Asadullah, Alana Abramson, Xilonen Hanson Pastran e.a.
AbstractAuthor's information

    There is a plethora of literature conflating the terms Indigenous justice and restorative justice. This collaborative action research project examined the relationship between Indigenous justice and restorative justice in British Columbia (BC) and Saskatchewan (SK), Canada. This qualitative study employed a decolonising research method. As a result, the research was overseen by a community advisory committee, composed of justice stakeholders and knowledge keepers in BC and SK. Data were collected through 26 key-informant interviews (seventeen from BC and nine from SK) and 33 focus group discussions in eight communities in BC and SK. Our findings included the definitions of restorative justice and Indigenous justice and points of convergence and divergence. This study unearthed a wide range of distinctions between Indigenous justice and restorative justice. According to some participants, ‘there’s absolutely no similarities’ between restorative justice and Indigenous justice, whereas to others restorative justice and Indigenous justice are like the ‘difference between chocolate and vanilla ice cream’. This study demonstrates the importance of dialogue between justice stakeholders and Indigenous Elders, knowledge keepers and communities to reveal the unique and important distinctions between Indigenous justice and restorative justice. This study ends with a discussion on limitations and areas for future research.


Muhammad Asadullah
Muhammad Asadullah is Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice Studies of the University of Regina, Canada.

Alana Abramson
Alana Abramson is a criminology instructor at the Department of Criminology, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada.

Xilonen Hanson Pastran
Xilonen Hanson Pastran is a law student at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Jori Fulks
Jori Fulks graduated from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Corresponding author: Muhammad Asadullah at Muhammad.Asadullah@uregina.ca.

Janna Greve
Janna Greve is PhD researcher with the KU Leuven Institute of Criminology, Belgium.

Lorena Cecilia Vega Dueñas
Lorena Cecilia Vega Dueñas is Assistant Professor at the Judicial Science Faculty, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Corresponding author: Janna Greve at janna.greve@kuleuven.be.

Jairo Ignacio Acosta Aristizábal
Jairo Ignacio Acosta Aristizábal is Delegate Inspector General for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) and PhD candidate in law at the Universidad Santo Tomás and PhD candidate in legal sociology at Universidad Externado de Colombia. Corresponding author: Jairo Ignacio Acosta Aristizábal at jiacostaa@yahoo.es.
Notes from the field

Truth and recognition at the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace

Authors Catalina Diaz, Lina Moreno and Sandra Santa
Author's information

Catalina Diaz
Catalina Diaz took office as one of the head judges of the Truth and Acknowledgement Chamber in the SJP, where she co-leads three macro-cases (case 03 on assassinations and enforced disappearances by State agents to present the victims as enemy combatants fallen in combat; case 06 on the extermination by State agents of the political party Patriotic Union; and case 08 on other crimes committed by State agents, including in collusion with paramilitaries and third parties).

Lina Moreno
Lina Moreno is a Colombian lawyer with extensive experience in transitional justice and armed conflict and has worked in Judge Diaz’ team for several years.

Sandra Santa
Sandra Santa is a Colombian lawyers with extensive experience in transitional justice and armed conflict and has also worked in Judge Diaz’ team for several years. Corresponding author: Catalina Diaz at catalinadiazgomez@gmail.com.

Juan José Cantillo
Juan José Cantillo is an Indigenous person of the Wayuu people in Colombia and a magistrate with the Amnesty or Pardon Chamber of the SJP.

Andrea Lozano
Andrea Lozano is assistant magistrate at the Appeals Section of the SJP. Corresponding author: Juan José Cantillo at cantpshai@yahoo.es.
Conversations on restorative justice

A talk with Vesna Nikolić-Ristanović

Authors Albert Dzur
Author's information

Albert Dzur
Albert Dzur is Distinguished Research Professor, Departments of Political Science and Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, USA. Corresponding author: Albert Dzur at awdzur@bgsu.edu.

Carl Stauffer
Carl Stauffer is a senior expert on reconciliation for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Corresponding author: Carl Stauffer at cstauffer@usip.org.

Laura Hein
Laura Hein is Policy Officer at the European Forum for Restorative Justice and Teaching Assistant at the Leuven Institute of Criminology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Corresponding author: Laura Hein at laura.hein@euforumrj.org.

Hilary Lustick
Hilary Lustick (PhD) is an Assistant Professor at the School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, School of Education. Corresponding author: Hilary Lustick at Hilary_Lustick@uml.edu.

Clara Rigoni
Clara Rigoni is Maître Assistante at the Faculty of Law, Criminal Sciences and Public Administration of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (Germany). Corresponding author: Clara Rigoni at clara.rigoni@unil.ch.