As a response to the over-representation of Australian Aboriginal offenders in Western Australian prisons and high rates of reoffending, this article presents a sketch of Western and Australian Aboriginal worldviews and core symbols as a basis for understanding the rehabilitative-restorative needs of this prisoner cohort. The work first reviews and argues that the Western-informed Risk-Need-Responsivity model of programming for Australian Aboriginal prisoners has limited value for preventing reoffending. An introduction and description are then given to an Aboriginal in-prison restorative justice process (AIPRJP) which is delivered in a regional Western Australian prison. The process is largely undergirded by an Australian Aboriginal worldview and directed to delivering a culturally constructive and corrective intervention. The AIPRJP uses a range of symbolic forms (i.e. ritual, myth, play, art, information), which are adapted to the prison context to bring about the aims of restorative justice. The article contends that culturally informed restorative justice processes can produce intermediate outcomes that can directly or indirectly be associated with reductions in reoffending.

The years 2018-2020 saw a number of new international legal instruments and guidelines relating to restorative justice. In 2018, a landmark Recommendation adopted by the Council of Europe and a Resolution by the Organization of American States encouraged its use in their regions. In 2019, the Milquet Report proposed amending a European Union Directive to promote restorative justice as a diversion from court, while in 2020, the European Union adopted a new Victims’ Strategy, and the United Nations published a revised Handbook on Restorative Justice Programmes. This article identifies and analyses the principal developments in this new international framework. It demonstrates the growing consensus on the potential applicability of restorative justice for all types of offences, and the emerging recognition that restorative justice should aim to satisfy the needs of all participants. It also explores statements endorsing the use of restorative justice beyond the criminal procedure and advising criminal justice institutions to utilise restorative principles to inform cultural change. The paper concludes that implementing international policies domestically requires justice reform advocates to build strong, trusting relationships, and organise inclusive partnerships, with all those who hold a stake in the development of restorative justice.

While many empirical studies on restorative justice conferencing have been conducted in the context of ‘what works’, research on ‘how it works’ is scarce. Little is known about how, in what conditions and for whom restorative justice conferencing ‘works’. In this article, I aim to fill this gap in the literature by developing a concept of readiness. It refers to participants’ attitudes and emotional dispositions towards, and knowledge about, restorative justice conferencing and the other parties prior to the face-to-face dialogue process. I suggest that the concept of readiness may be a key independent variable to understand how restorative justice conferencing works because it reminds us that a restorative journey may begin before a face-to-face dialogue between participants take places. This article concludes by offering how it can be used in research on restorative justice conferencing.

Restorative justice services have expanded in England and Wales since the Victim’s Code 2015. Yet evidence from the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that in 2016-2017 only 4.1 per cent of victims recall being offered such a service. This article presents the evidence from an action research project set in three police forces in England and Wales, which sought to develop the delivery of restorative justice interventions with victims of adult and youth crime. We depict the complexity intrinsic to making an offer of restorative justice and the difficulties forces experienced in practice, given the cultural, practical and administrative challenges encountered during the course of three distinct pilot projects. Points of good practice, such as institutional buy-in, uncomplicated referral processes and adopting a victim-focused mindset are highlighted. Finally, we draw the results from the different projects together to suggest a seven-point set of requirements that need to be in place for the offer of restorative practice to become an effective and familiar process in policing.

In this article, the current state of the Danish police-based victim-offender mediation (VOM) programme is examined against the background of the Norwegian Mediation Service (NMS). In the two similar national languages both are called Konfliktråd, and the Danish programme – which was launched in 2010 – is named after and clearly inspired by the Norwegian service. Yet they differ in terms of organisational structure, capacity and use. Despite similar population size, the NMS completes around 12 times as many meetings as the Danish VOM programme. Furthermore, since 2016 the average number of meetings completed per year by the Danish programme has dropped significantly. In the article, I examine how the development of the Danish VOM programme has seemingly been held back by its placement in the police and also by a lack of clear prioritisation by management, political support and legal status. The VOM secretariat and local VOM coordinators attempt to mitigate the negative effects of these factors. Yet the framework of the Danish VOM programme seems to continue hindering the emulation of the Norwegian service in terms of capacity and use.

An argument for the importance of strategically selected terminology in the practice of restorative justice in sexual violence cases is presented through reviews of restorative justice, communication, social constructivist and feminist literature. The significance of language and its impact on those who use it and hear it is established from its use in classical antiquity, psychotherapy and semantics. The use of the terms ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ is explored in the fields of legal definitions and feminist theory. Reports in the existing restorative justice literature are used to bring together the literature on the impact of the use of terminology and the legal and feminist understandings of the significance of the use of the terms ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’. We argue that the restorative justice practitioner has a crucial role in guiding the person harmed in sexual violence cases in the strategic use of ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ to enhance the positive impact of terminology on the persons harmed in acts of sexual violence. Conclusions from our explorations support the creation of a proposed sexual violence restorative justice situational map for use as a navigational aid in restorative justice practice in sexual violence cases.