In December 2025, Restorative Justice: Strategies for Change (RJS4C) Core Members in Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland and Scotland published an article, entitled, Engaging With Policymakers and Practitioners to Implement Restorative Justice in Europe: Lessons From 10 Countries. The article, co-authored by Dr. Ian Marder, Dr. Anna Matczak, Dr. Steve Kirkwood and Gert Jan Slump, with research assistant Ruairí Weiner, presents the findings of a review of the RJS4C project.

RJS4C was a five-year project to build connections and capacity to implement restorative justice in Europe. It included partners in Albania, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Scotland and the European Forum for Restorative Justice (EFRJ). The post-project review found that the connections built with policymakers and practitioners helped RJS4C partners understand, identify and create opportunities to work across the criminal justice sector, depending on local contexts, to develop restorative justice.

Situating the results in the policy engagement literature, the article proposes that a ‘communities of practice’ model can help restorative justice advocates instigate and co-lead multilevel, locally responsive platforms to drive and support implementation.

You can read the article open access here.

Research assistance for the article was funded by the Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology Research Incentivisation Fund.

For more information about the ongoing work of RJS4C in Ireland, see www.restorativejustice.ie.