Dorothy Keating, Molly Doherty, Elaine Healy, Sarah Treacy and Emily Sheary
Restorative Justice in the Community
In November 2023, a strategic meeting of restorative justice practitioners and service managers was hosted by Dr. Ian Marder at Maynooth University. One of the actions agreed was that it would be valuable for practitioners to meet with more regularity to share cases and learning. It was decided to hold a mid-year practitioner event during 2024.
Restorative Justice in the Community agreed to host the event, which took place in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary on 20th June 2024. It was attended by 23 participants from seven organisations, including the Probation Service Restorative Justice and Victims Services Unit, Le Chéile, Athy Alternatives Project, the Cornmarket Project, Northwest Restorative Justice Service, Restorative Justice Services and Restorative Justice in the Community.
The event aimed to continue building on the work of previous meetings in strengthening communication and collaboration between restorative justice service providers. Participants expressed their pleasure at being able to converse in person, to put faces to names and to share knowledge and expertise with such a wide range of professionals.
Throughout the day there were opportunities to present and listen to various case studies. One such case study, from Northwest Restorative Justice Services, included a prop of a three-legged stool to demonstrate the victim, offender and community elements of restorative justice. The team from the Cornmarket Project spoke about their work combining elements of motivational interviewing and restorative approaches to encourage empathy and understanding. Le Cheile gave an excellent description of their empathy programme, which works one-to-one with young people to develop empathy, accountability and options for reparation. They spoke about how the programme’s success is measured and about training members of the Gardai as restorative conference participants.
Restorative Justice Services and Restorative Justice in the Community presented cases for discussion that had involved challenges of communication, ethical questions or difficulties in managing the expectations of participants around Court outcomes. Issues around confidentiality and the challenges of a civil case running alongside a criminal case also provided opportunities for discourse. The case studies were challenging, insightful and allowed great learning opportunities for all participants in considering their own approaches.
The Probation Service team spoke about the challenge of facilitating Victim Offender Mediation (VOM) post-sentence in a prison setting. They spoke about the importance of comprehensive preparation work with all parties and the importance of preparing the victim to be as comfortable as possible in the unnerving prison environment. It was encouraging to hear that Prison Governors supported VOM and provided the opportunity for a victim to come and view the meeting room in advance if they wish. One Governor even made the effort to greet the victim outside of the prison to help put them at ease. The team shared some of the learning from the process, including the outcomes for the victim and offender.
Similar issues were identified by all practitioners in terms of the challenges of obtaining victim details and balancing the needs of victim and offender. The group also discussed self-care, and it was evident throughout the discussion that practitioners are supporting victims and offenders through sensitive and traumatic cases. As such, the importance of practitioners maintaining their own wellbeing was highlighted, with training around compassion fatigue being identified as a possible joint learning opportunity for the future.
Meeting in person was a great networking opportunity that will facilitate more collaboration going forward. Plans are already underway for the next event.