Press release
Minister McEntee welcomes the launch of the new Restorative Justice Website
Published on
Last updated on
Published on
Last updated on
The Minister for Justice Helen McEntee TD today welcomed the launch of the new restorative justice website www.restorativejustice.ie.
Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change (RJS4C) is a collaborative project, which aims to support and encourage the development of restorative justice in Europe.
Speaking about the importance of the principle of restorative justice the Minister stated:
"We know that restorative justice is a criminal justice process, which has been shown, through mediation, how to help victims recover from crime, reduce reoffending and save public resources. It is now widely accepted that restorative justice is compatible with the traditional criminal justice systems of both common law and civil law jurisdictions and the Programme for Government includes an important commitment to work with all criminal justice agencies to build capacity to deliver restorative justice safely and effectively."
The Minister recognised the importance of the new website as one further step towards furthering this commitment:
"I consider that this website is an excellent resource and I am delighted to be in a position to fund this very important project. It is an important part of my reform agenda to put the Justice Sector on a firmly digital footing. I want to commend the excellent work of Dr. Ian Marder and his colleagues in making this new website a reality. It is clear it will contribute to increasing the accessibility of safe, high quality information about restorative justice in Ireland, as well as raise knowledge about restorative justice processes and services. It is an important element in changing cultures through the wider application of restorative principles and practices in criminal justice settings."
The website contains a range of new resources, including the initial findings of a mapping exercise on restorative justice services in Irish Criminal Justice contexts, which has been funded by the department. It also contains information on the profiles of criminal justice services and agencies that deliver restorative justice or use restorative approaches in their work, and of bodies and networks that support restorative practitioners. A range of case studies is also available which illustrate the use of restorative justice and restorative practices. The website also contains information of the results of an ongoing mapping exercise, which captures the levels of training in, and delivery of, restorative justice in criminal justice in Ireland.
A link to the website is also available at Department of Justice and Probation Service websites.
ENDS
Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change (RJS4C) is a collaborative project, which aims to support and encourage the development of restorative justice in Europe. It seeks to achieve this by identifying, connecting and supporting a small group of persons – the ‘Core Members’ – in each participating jurisdiction, whose role it is to develop and implement a co-created strategy with a much larger group of policymakers, practitioners, researchers, activists and other relevant, local parties – the ‘Stakeholder Group’.
The project involves ten participating jurisdictions: Albania, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland. In each, between two and four persons, drawn from policy, practice, academia and civil society, are acting as Core Members.
At a European level, RJS4C is coordinated by Dr. Ian Marder (Maynooth University Department of Law), Gert Jan Slump (Restorative Justice Nederland) and the European Forum for Restorative Justice.
Restorative justice is an approach to justice in which one of the responses to a crime is to organise a meeting between the victim and the offender, sometimes with representatives of the wider community.